Bengal Government Decentralises WBSSC to Boost Recruitment Efficiency

As the first step, the old system of operating WBSSC through five regional offices, divided on the basis of districts in a particular zone, will be resurrected, sources in the state education department said.

To recall, after the foundation of WBSSC on April 1, 1997, during the Left Front regime under the leadership of then West Bengal Chief Minister and nonagenarian Indian Marxist, Late Jyoti Basu, the Commission was to operate in a decentralised manner through these five regional offices.

However, with the Trinamool Congress government under the leadership of the former Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, coming to power in 2011, ending the 34-year Left Front rule, these five regional offices were made defunct, and the entire system of school-job recruitment was done from the Commission's headquarters at Acharya Sadan at Salt Lake on the northern outskirts of Kolkata.

"The new state government has now decided to revert to the old system of functioning through the five regional offices as regards recruitment for teaching and non-teaching staff in state-run schools, with important policy decisions to be taken centrally from the Commission's headquarters at Salt Lake," said the sources.

Similarly, he added, the new state government has also decided to decentralise the process of recruitment of the primary teachers in the state-run schools by granting "autonomous" status to the different District Primary School Councils (DPSCs). Mass irregularities also took place in the recruitment of primary teachers during the previous Trinamool Congress regime. Till now, the DPSCs were running like district-level extended arms of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE).

Already, the State Education Department has issued communications to all District Magistrates, instructing them to compile lists of "identified tainted" candidates within their respective districts who obtained teaching and non-teaching positions in various state-run schools in exchange for cash.

Besides preparing lists of such "identified tainted" candidates, the District Magistrates (DM) have also been asked by the department to calculate the amount these candidates will have to pay back to the state government as salaries they received during their service periods and the interest accrued on it.

The calculated amounts will be recovered by the state government from these "identified tainted" candidates as per the order of the Calcutta High Court first in 2024 and subsequently by the Supreme Court in 2025.

- IANS