BLACKEST OF BOARDS

Around 30,000 vacancies in state-run schools—for the youth of employmentparched West Bengal, it was a once-in-a-decade opportunity.

- Romita Datta

However, for the thousands of diligent candidates who took the State Level Selection Test (SLST), that modest ambition curdled into bitter disappointment. The reason? They were left in the lurch even as many allegedly ‘ineligible’ candidates made it to the merit list and secured jobs. Soon enough, there were malodorous whiffs of alleged political patronage and the sale of posts. All such allegations of irregularities were denied by the ruling Trinamool Congress government. For some 4,000 graduates and postgraduates caught in a limbo, there was nothing for it but to file petitions in courts, and as it slow-cooked there, sit in a dharna in central Kolkata.

They endured police batons, arrests, insults and tragedy—two protesters took their own lives and two others died of ill health. Sensing a scandal, the state government approached with inducements, but little ground was ceded. The breakthrough came on February 28, 2022, when a Calcutta High Court single-judge bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the alleged irregularities. Then, on May 5, the government gave in—it announced the creation of 5,000 additional teaching posts to accommodate the protesters.

Government teachers are recruited by the School Service Commission (SSC) through the SLST. Soon after the recruitment process started in 2017 following the exam (500,000 candidates took it), as many as 2,030 petitioners approached the Calcutta High Court, alleging various discrepancies. The protracted litigation has unearthed nearly 6,200 instances of alleged deviation from due process.