The court decisions sparked outrage, partly because they provided no protection even for candidates who claimed to be untainted. The High Court said the scam was “too deep and pervasive” to separate genuine recruits from those who benefited from fraud.
The case details how the recruitment was rigged at every level. The WBSSC hired a company called M/s NYSA without any open tender process to handle scanning and evaluation of OMR sheets and to maintain a digital database. According to the Calcutta High Court, the commission failed to provide any documentation to prove NYSA was even qualified. “Letter of appointment of M/s NYSA contains only two lines which requires M/s NYSA to scan and evaluate the OMR sheets. No other terms and conditions of the appointment have been specified,” the judgment said.
NYSA, in turn, subcontracted data management to M/s Data Scantech Solutions. Although court records mention that scanning was done inside the WBSSC office, the commission claimed ignorance of Data Scantech’s involvement. The court concluded that the hiring of both firms was “unashamedly orchestrated” to enable the fraud.
The misconduct extended to several areas: appointment letters were issued but candidates were not allowed to join; counselling lists were not published as required; and lower-ranked candidates received appointments ahead of higher-ranked ones. The WBSSC had not released any public merit list, and much of this information surfaced only after the CBI obtained the original database. Some candidates even secured their answer sheets via Right to Information (RTI) requests.
The manipulation continued with a new recruitment notification in June 2021, which effectively bypassed the waiting list of Group D candidates from a 2019 panel. Candidates were picked at will, bypassing those on both merit and waiting lists. The 2016 notification had advertised 24,640 vacancies: 12,905 assistant teachers for classes IX and X, 5,712 for classes XI and XII, 2,067 non-teaching Group C staff, and 3,956 non-teaching Group D staff. Despite this, only 22,930 posts were formally recommended by WBSSC. A mismatch was found between the data held by WBSSC and NYSA in at least 4,091 cases. The CBI found 8,163 manipulated marksheets. From the WBSSC’s own data, there were 926 cases of rank jumping and 1,498 people who were appointed without appearing for any tests. Some candidates had submitted blank answer sheets and were still hired. The court described this number as “large”.
Moreover, the total number of appointment letters issued exceeded the commission’s own recommendation list by 2,355. This meant 25,735 people received job offers—1,095 more than the total number of posts advertised.
The West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE), which issued the appointment letters, claimed it had acted on recommendations delivered—mostly by hand—by WBSSC’s regional offices. In a move that raised more questions, the WBSSC destroyed all its recruitment records in July 2019, even though the process was still ongoing. A July 22, 2019 executive order cited a particular rule to justify this destruction. However, scanned copies were still being issued to candidates from 2018 to 2023.
It was only after the CBI seized three hard drives from the home of a former NYSA employee in September 2022 that many of the irregularities were fully confirmed. Additional files were retrieved from Data Scantech. Most anomalies, including rank jumping, were acknowledged by WBSSC only after these discoveries. The CBI found no scanned answer sheets in WBSSC’s own offices, suggesting officials continued to rely on NYSA employees to respond to RTI requests, even after the records had been destroyed.
The WBSSC then filed two petitions in Calcutta High Court asking to create extra posts so that appointees who had never appeared for exams could be retained. The court demanded to know who had approved this request. WBSSC’s head took responsibility, but the court sought all relevant documents. These revealed that the request had been approved by the State Cabinet, whose decision dated back to May 2022. The state’s principal secretary appeared in court in November 2022 with the cabinet note and memo. But faced with objections from petitioners and the court’s questions, WBSSC withdrew its request.
The court, however, rejected the withdrawal and directed the CBI to investigate the creation of these so-called supernumerary posts. While the Supreme Court upheld the cancellation of the recruitment process on April 3, it issued a separate order on April 8, setting aside the Calcutta High Court’s direction for a CBI probe into the supernumerary posts.
(with ToI inputs)
