Bengal school jobs case: WBSSC draws Calcutta HC’s ire over repeated mistakes

Kolkata: The West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) on Wednesday drew the ire of a special division bench of the Calcutta High Court for making repeated mistakes in the multi-crore cash-for-school-jobs cases in the state.

A candidate, who is a party in the school jobs case, on Wednesday presented the copy of the OMR sheet of his written examination that he secured through an RTI application to the special division bench of Justice Debangshu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi, which has been constituted to specially hear the matter related to school jobs cases following an instruction from the Supreme Court.

Noting that the copy of the OMR sheet secured by the candidate through RTI application is the same as what is reserved in the database of WBSSC, the division bench expressed ire as to why the commission did not mention about the database to the court earlier.

The bench pointed out that earlier, the WBSSC had informed the court that that the commission does not have records of the OMR sheets, which are with the NYSA, the outsourced agency for supply of OMR sheets for written examination for recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff in the state-run schools.

WBSSC's counsel informed the court that there has been a mistake in the wording of the RTI reply.

“The commission provided the scanned copies of the OMR sheets which the CBI provided them, while the number was in the WBSSC database,” the commission’s counsel submitted.

This line of argument irked the bench, as Justice Basak said, “How many more mistakes will you continue to make? This is 2024 and still you are making mistakes.”