Kolkata, July 8 (IANS) The West Bengal government and the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) on Tuesday separately challenged the order of the Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench directing the commission to exclude candidates already identified as “tainted” from the fresh recruitment process for filling up teaching posts in state-run schools lying vacant following a Supreme Court order cancelling 25,753 jobs in April this year.

On Monday, the single-judge bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharya stated that the candidates already identified as “tainted” should be excluded from the fresh selection process and also said that if any such candidate who had already been identified as “tainted” had submitted his application for the fresh recruitment process, his application should be summarily rejected.

However, the single-judge bench did not entertain the contention of the petitioners against the two new weightage criteria introduced in the fresh recruitment notification carrying 10 marks each, first under the head of “prior teaching experience” and the second under “lecture demonstration”.

The contention of the petitioners was that the procedure to be followed in the fresh recruitment process should be the same as that followed in 2016, the entire panel of which was cancelled by the Supreme Court in April this year.

Following this, the petitioners challenged the single-judge bench’s order. In the fresh petition, the petitioners have argued that since the entire recruitment process in the panel of 2016 was termed as illegal by the Supreme Court in April, then why those teachers whose jobs have been cancelled would be allowed to take advantage of the two new weightage of “prior teaching experience” and “lecture demonstration”.

The petitioners claimed that the fresh recruitment process should provide a level playing field for all eligible candidates. They also argued that the new weight criteria would put the fresher candidates at a disadvantage in the fresh recruitment process.

On the other hand, the state government and the WBSSC approached the high court challenging that part of the single-judge bench order which directed the exclusion of identified “tainted” candidates from the fresh recruitment process.

This means that the single-judge bench order has been challenged twice, but on different grounds.

Both the petitions challenging the single-judge bench order were filed at the division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Smita Das. Both the petitions have been admitted.

–IANS

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