WBSSC jobs: Deserving teachers move SC, challenge HC directives
The Statesman | 20 July 2025
A section of jobless untainted teachers on Friday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Calcutta High Court (HC) directives on West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) notification for fresh recruitment of teachers in state government-aided schools.
The aggrieved teachers have filed a SLP in the apex court and hearing is expected to be held next week, it’s learnt.
The division Bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Smita Das De in the HC on Wednesday upheld the teachers’ recruitment notification saying the new rules are more stringent and student centric.
Dismissing a battery of appeals filed by a group of candidates against the single-judge Bench order, the division bench said: “Although the WBSSC and WBBSE are responsible for the present stalemate that has adversely impacted the education system, it is high time that all the vacancies are filled up if required by clubbing the vacancies as the separate recruitment process for vacancies declared in 2016 and beyond it would cause serious inconvenience and delay in filling up the existing vacancies.”
The WBSSC had issued the notification for the recruitment of 35,726 teachers — 23,212 for Classes IX and X, and 12,514 for Classes XI and XII— on 30 May in compliance with a SC directive that instructed the state to initiate a fresh recruitment process.
The apex court, in April, had directed cancellation of appointments of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching group C and D staff across government-aided secondary and higher secondary schools, scrapping the entire 2016 selection panel.
The petitioners challenged before the single bench certain provisions of the recruitment rules of 2025 relating to fixation of minimum marks in graduation/post-graduation level to adjudge eligible candidates to participate in the selection process, and changing the pattern of allotment of marks, apart from age relaxation criteria.
Over five lakh candidates have so far applied for the fresh recruitment of 35,726 assistant teachers, a senior official said.
An online application portal was launched on 16 June to facilitate the recruitment process. The original 14 July deadline has also been extended to 21 July.
In the 2016 WBSSC recruitment tests, over 3 lakh candidates had applied for teaching jobs, another WBSSC official said.
After the apex court’s April order, WBSSC had identified 15,403 out of 17,206 teachers as “not found to be specifically tainted”, allowing them to continue receiving salaries until December. The remaining 1,804 teachers have been barred from returning to schools.
Reacting to the fresh application process, some aggrieved members of Deserving Teachers’ Rights Forum said: “We have nothing to say about the number of applicants. All we can say is those who have passed the 2016 exams cannot sit with their students who have graduated, completed post-graduate degrees and now are aspiring to be teachers.”
“After the SC order, the commission and the education department should not have undertaken the process in such a hurry, and instead, could have worked on presenting a water-tight case for ‘untainted teachers’ before the apex court,” he added.