Supreme Court Reserves Judgment On Appeals Against HC Order Quashing West Bengal SSC Appointments

The Supreme Court today (February 10) reserved its decision on the batch of pleas challenging the Calcutta High Court's order setting aside the appointments by the West Bengal School Selection Commission for over 25,000 teaching and non-teaching posts in government schools in 2016.The bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar heard the matter. The SSC appointments had come under the scanner due to the infamous cash-for-jobs recruitment scam.During the hearing, the CJI verbally remarked that there is no concrete guarantee that the only reliable source of data for matching the OMR scans in the SSC server was the data retrieved from NYSA employee Pankaj Bansal. The CJI noted that CBI agreed that data found from Bansal was the second copy of the apparently original data which was copied from the data available with NYSA. "See the difficulty is this- we don't have the original mark sheets- CBI says that the data with Bansal matches with the SSC server data- but still we cannot authenticate and vouch for, that this is the original one because in the absence of the original mark sheets- the suspicion is now today even to the extent whether these are the original marksheets of the candidates? Because there is so much (inaudible) done on such a large scale, it's impossible to authenticate that" Previously, the CJI highlighted that the core issue for the Court to consider at present is how credible would be the scanned data of the original copies of the OMR sheets since there is no concrete proof that the original OMR sheets, after being collected from the candidates, were not tampered with before scanning. Notably, the SSC admitted to having destroyed the original OMR sheets after 1 year of the exam in terms of the exam rules.There are 5 main categories of stakeholders which the Court have identified : (1) West Bengal Government; (2) WBSSC; (3)Original Petitioners - who were not selected (representing classes 9-10, 11-12, groups C and D); (4) persons whose appointments are cancelled by the High Court ; (5) Central Bureau of Investigation.How Was The Scanning Of OMR Sheets Conducted & What Were The CBI FindingsNotably, the SSC had tasked a private company called NYSA Communications for the scanning and evaluations of the OMR sheets, which was done at the office of the SSC. However, NYSA had sub-delegated the task of scanning to an entity by the name of DATA Scantech Solutions, Noida, which was present at the premises of SSC for completing the scanning work.Previously, the CBI informed the bench led by then CJI DY Chandrachud that the images of the OMR were handed over by DATA Scantech Solutions to NYSA Communications Private Limited in digital form leaving the original hard copies of the OMR sheets in the office of the SSC. According to the CBI report, the SSC handed over the answer keys for all subjects to NYSA Communications Private Limited for evaluating the OMR responses. CBI seized the server database of the SSC during the course of the investigation.Subsequently, in September 2022, 3 hard disks were recovered from the former NYSA employee Pankaj Bansal containing data of the scanned OMR sheets. A certificate was also taken by Bansal in terms of S. 65B of Evidence Act.The CBI in its report to the Court disclosed that there mismatches of results were found when the Commission's server was tallied with the server from Bansal."The written marks awarded to candidates as available on the server of the commission had been increased to qualify underserving candidates. This mismatch establishes that manipulation in marks of written examination in the case of many candidates was resorted to and such candidates were identified," the CBI report stated.Today, the counsel for the CBI submitted that the investigation reveals that the data retrieved from Bansal was the original data itself and the original data was then manipulated before feeding into the SSC server and appointments were on that basis. The Counsel submitted : "There is a final tampering in the original data- which is the Pankaj Bansal data and the marks which were subsequently put in and all the appointments done (by SSC)" Arguments By The Parties Sr Advocate Vibha Makhija appearing for those candidates who were not selected by the SSC panel suggested that the better alternative to setting aside the entire selection is rather to knock out those found to be selected through wrong means and instead fill their vacancy again with those in the merit list. "I have a right to be considered in accordance with my merit, so I cannot be thrown- my right to public employment is a very valuable right especially in the current economic circumstances. So everybody who falls into the merit list must be considered." Makhija submitted. She added that setting aside the entire selection would adversely affect those selected candidates who have now reached the prescribed age limit for appointment.Sr Advocate Jaideep Gupta appearing for the West Bengal SSC submitted that...

Supreme Court Reserves Judgment On Appeals Against HC Order Quashing West Bengal SSC Appointments

Anmol Kaur Bawa

Evidence even if collected illegally is admissible, the Court orally commented.

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