Supreme Court: The petitioners sought Special Leave to Appeal against the judgement passed by the Calcutta High Court wherein without affording an opportunity of being heard, arbitrarily cancelled the appointment of petitioners who were appointed as Assistant Teachers of Government aided primary school in the year 2017-2018. While exercising its appellate jurisdiction, the Division Bench of Aniruddha Bose and J.K. Maheshwari J.J., stayed the impugned order terminating the service of the petitioners.
In the matter at hand, pursuant to the Teacher Eligibility Test 2014 held in 2016, petitioners were granted appointment by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education as Trained Teachers to the post of Assistant Teachers in 2017-2018.
In April 2019, a few unsuccessful candidates filed a writ petition before the Calcutta High Court challenging appointment of one out of 269 teachers inter-alia, on the grounds of illegality. Calcutta High Court vide order dated 13-06-2022 terminated the services of 269 teachers without providing an opportunity of being heard entirely premised on suspicion. The Division Bench of Calcutta High Court upheld the order in the appeal passed by the Single Judge.
Aggrieved by the same petitioners had preferred a special leave to petition which perused the principles of natural justice and stayed the termination of 269 candidates and directed the Single Judge to take appropriate decision depending on the defence that maybe taken. Pursuant to the above direction, the Single Judge had recorded that genuine candidates were roaming around the streets with tears in their eyes while others who were ingenuine were drawing salary from school.
[Kuntal Pal v Ramesh Malik, Special Leave to Appeal 4248 of 2023, matter heard on 12-04-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the parties- Senior Advocate P S Patwaila, Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora, Advocate Joydeep Mazumdar, Advocate Debojyoti Bhattacharya, Advocate C. Chaube, Advocate Vikas Kumar, Advocate on Record Shalini Kaul, Advocate on Record Amit Pawan, Advocate Anand Nandan, Advocate Abhishek Amritanshu, Advocate Hassan Zubair Waris, Advocate Suchit Singh Rawat, Advocate Shivangi, Advocate Aakarsh, Advocate Amit Kumar, Advocate on Record Kunal Chatterji, Advocate Maitrayee Banerjee, Advocate Rohit Bansal, Advocate Kshitij Singh, Advocate on Record Astha Sharma, Advocate Srisatya Mohanty, Advocate Anju T., Advocate Shreyash Awasthi, Advocate on Record Swarnendu Chatterjee, Advocate Yashwardhan Singh, Advocate Deepakshi Garg, Advocate Megha Saha, Advocate Sandip Kr. Bhattacharya, Advocate Mr. Rajesh.
