Small percentage of anomalies in list of untainted teachers being fixed: Bengal SSC

The Commission said the discrepancies — such as missing names and new inclusions — were being corrected swiftly.

It urged the media and public to consider “the larger picture where most of the deserving teachers have found place.”

A top SSC official told PTI that the Commission has ensured the salaries of around 16,000 ‘eligible’ teachers who have not been implicated in any allegations of irregularities.

He added that some “human errors” had crept in during the data compilation process, as the entire Commission had been working “on a war footing” to finalise the list of untainted candidates since April 21.

“As the entire job was being completed in a time-bound manner, there might be a few human errors in feeding so much data into the system, which are being rectified. We will come out with a fresh list of names of all untainted teachers from the 2016 recruitment test, whose names were missing earlier, very soon,” he said.

Asked whether Babita Sarkar — a teacher from North Bengal whose appointment was annulled along with those of 26,000 teaching and non-teaching staff selected through the 2016 exams — had initially figured in the list of ‘not specifically tainted’ candidates and is now being removed, the official said “yes.”

Babita was first appointed to Mekhliganj Indira Balika High School in 2021 after winning a legal battle against Ankita Adhikari, daughter of former minister and TMC leader Paresh Adhikari.

However, she lost her job following a subsequent High Court order in May 2023.

Reacting to the SSC’s latest move, Babita described it as “inconsistent and a flip-flop,” adding that the Commission had “lost its credibility.”

Anamika Roy, who had initially secured the job over Babita in 2016 based on a higher academic score and ranking, rejoined her workplace at Harihar High School in Jalpaiguri district in May 2023.

Though she, too, lost her job on April 3 following the Supreme Court verdict, her name appears in the list of ‘not specifically tainted’ candidates submitted by the SSC to the district inspector’s office in Jalpaiguri.

The list, released on Wednesday, prompted many protesting teachers to return to work, though others continued their sit-in demonstrations.

Dhritish Mondal, leader of the Deserving Teachers Forum, said around 300 names of untainted teachers had been omitted from the lists sent to the DI offices.

He added that the SSC had assured them the anomalies would be corrected and the missing names would be included in the revised list.

The SSC official said, “If 200–250 names of eligible teachers have been omitted among 15,000, that is not a very big number, considering we had to prepare a voluminous database of deserving teachers. Even if a single eligible teacher’s name is omitted, that has to be fixed once and for all. But we are working on that and will also present our case before the court in a foolproof manner.”

On Friday, the untainted teachers who had been staging a protest outside the WBSSC headquarters for the past five days decided to temporarily suspend their demonstration and return to their schools.

“We are withdrawing the sit-in before the SSC headquarters from today. Our protest will continue at Sahid Minar in central Kolkata,” said Mondal.

The Supreme Court had on April 3 scrapped the entire 2016 recruitment panel due to widespread irregularities, resulting in the termination of services for 25,753 teaching and non-teaching staff of state-aided schools.

However, in a subsequent order on April 17, the apex court allowed untainted teachers to continue their services until December 31.

These eligible teachers, however, remain steadfast in their demand for job security until retirement.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.