SSC publishes list of 1,804 ‘tainted’ candidates in 2016 appointments

KOLKATA: Complying with the Supreme Court's seven-day deadline, the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) on Saturday released a list of 1,804 "specifically tainted" candidates who have been barred from appearing in the Sept 7 and Sept 14 fresh recruitment examinations due to discrepancies in their 2016 State Level Selection Test (SLST) appointments.Among them, 1,400 candidates, who had applied for the Sept recruitment, will have their admit cards cancelled and even if they somehow appear, their results will be scrapped.The SSC had told the top court that during the 2016 recruitments, 11,610 teachers were appointed for classes 9-10. Among them, 808 had OMR issues, 74 candidates obtained jobs by jumping rank, while 111 secured jobs despite not being on the 2016 recruitment panel.

In this list, a total of 993 were found "specifically tainted".

In classes 11-12, 5,596 teachers were appointed following the 2016 panel. Among them, 771 had OMR issues, 20 secured their jobs through rank jumping, while 18 joined despite not being on the panel. In this category, 810 were found to be "specifically tainted".Clubbing both, a list of 1,803 "specifically tainted" candidates was submitted to the apex court.

However, the list uploaded on SSC's website on Saturday included one more tainted candidate. An SSC official clarified: "One name was missing in the previous list. This was detected while preparing the final list. The entire process was screened several times to make it error-free."The notice issued by SSC along with the updated list read: "…the list of candidates as mentioned in List 1 is attached below, who were selected, whose selection has been set aside by the Hon'ble High Court and confirmed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court, is hereby published on the official website of the West Bengal Central School Service Commission in order to place the list of such tainted candidates in public domain."

The list includes the names and roll numbers of the tainted candidates and does not specify where they had taught.After this, the SSC published a second list of candidates for classes 9-10-11-12 who applied for the Sept tests and stated that their provisional admit cards were being cancelled. A total of 2,100 tainted candidates were found in both lists (for 9-10 and 11-12), among which several names were common. After a thorough check, 1,400 tainted candidates were identified whose admit cards were being cancelled.The notice read: "It is clarified that if tainted candidates from the 1st SLST, 2016 selection process are issued provisional admit cards, they should not appear in the 2nd SLST, 2016. It is further clarified that all admit cards are provisional and do not create any right in favour of the candidates in respect of their eligibility. Eligibility will be checked physically at the time of verification at the post-examination stage.

" It also stated that any tainted candidate found to have appeared in the examination will be rejected.A total 5.8 lakh applications were deposited for the fresh test.The tainted list has the names of some Trinamool functionaries. Among them, two are councillors and one is a West Midnapore party functionary. They did not speak to the media on Saturday.Suman Biswas, a protesting sacked teacher, said: "There were only names in the list, but other details were missing as state govt is still trying to cover them. We are partially happy that the list was published, but our battle will continue until our hard-earned jobs are back."