Trinamool Cong. welcomes SC stay on termination of school jobs in West Bengal
The matter had become a political issue, and a high point in the campaigns of both the ruling and Opposition parties in the State in the Lok Sabha election; ‘mentally relaxed’, says Mamata
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) leadership in West Bengal on Tuesday expressed happiness over the Supreme Court’s decision to grant an interim stay on the order of the Calcutta High Court terminating the jobs of about 26,000 teachers and non-teaching sta¨ recruited for State-run schools.
The matter has emerged as a political issue in the ongoing Lok Sabha election, and became a high point in the campaigns of both the ruling and Opposition parties in the State.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was “really very happy and mentally relaxed” to receive justice at the highest court of the land. Addressing election rallies on Tuesday, she targeted Opposition parties over the job terminations and said “like man-eating tigers there are job-eating tigers”.
TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said truth had triumphed. “The Honorable Supreme Court has DEFUSED the BJP’s ‘E◣PLOSIVE’ hurled last week to malign Bengal’s image,” he posted on ◣.
The issue of termination of jobs that came into effect after an order by a Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court on April 22 was raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his election campaign in the State. The PM assured legal help to candidates who had quali ed in the examination without using unfair means but had lost their jobs due to the High Court order.
A Division Bench of Justices Debangsu Basak and Justice Md Shabbar Rashi invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching sta¨ on grounds of irregularities in the appointment process.
A section of teachers whose jobs were terminated started a hunger strike after the High Court order in Kolkata, which was called o¨ following the intervention of the Supreme Court.
The BJP leadership also held a press conference on Tuesday and said that the developments had proved beyond doubt that there had been illegality in the recruitment of teachers and non-teaching sta¨. “There has not been a single recruitment in the Trinamool Congress regime that has been without corruption,” BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya said.
Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Rajya Sabha MP and senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, who represented a section of the petitioners before the Supreme Court, said that the question now was how the School Service Commission would distinguish between the candidates who had secured jobs using fair means and those who did so through unfair means.