Withdrawn Trinamool-era orders for supernumerary teachers, Bengal govt tells Calcutta HC

Kolkata, Aug 19 (IANS) The West Bengal government on Wednesday told Calcutta High Court about the decision on two controversial notifications issued by the previous Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government regarding creation of 1,600 supernumerary posts for upper-primary teachers in state-run schools.

The state government had also clarified that the withdrawal of the two notifications in the matter would mean that the new state government will not go-ahead with such numerary post recruitments, which created controversies during the previous state government’s tenure and also was questioned by the Calcutta High Court earlier.

The previous Mamata Banerjee-led Cabinet created 1,600 supernumerary vacancies in the upper primary section for physical education and vocational education teachers from the waiting list.

The-then State Cabinet took this decision to reduce recruitment complications.

The matter was notified through two notifications first on May 19, 2022, and the second on October 14, 2022.

However, the Calcutta High Court’s the-then single-judge bench of Justice Biswajit Basu (now retired) dismissed the state’s decision.

The court said that supernumerary posts could not be created like regular recruitment and they could be done only in special circumstances.

The previous State Cabinet, thereafter, approached a division bench of the Calcutta High Court challenging the decision of the single-judge bench.

The case was sscheduled to be heard on Wednesday by a division bench led by Justice Rajasekhar Manthar.

However, the state government told the court about its decision to withdraw the two controversial notifications regarding the supernumerary posts recruitments.

The previous Trinamool Congress-led state government’s decision for creation of supernumerary posts also attracted strong criticism from the former judge of the Calcutta High Court, Abhijit Ganguly Gangopadhyay, who is currently the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Lok Sabha member from Tamluk constituency in East Midnapore district.

Gangopadhyay, whose court judgments had earlier opened the way from probe by the central probe agencies like Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), to initiate probe in the multi-crore cash-for-school jobs scam in West Bengal during the previous Trinamool Congress government, had said at one point in time that the decision to create supernumerary posts was enough for the Election Commission of India (ECI) to cancel the election symbol of Trinamool Congress.

–IANS

src/khz