Key Points

At the same time, the "genuine" candidates who have started a marathon sit-in-protest in front of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) office, which started on Monday evening and continued on Tuesday night, will continue their protest till the time the commission or the state government comes out with the segregated list of "genuine" and "tainted" candidates.

The "genuine" candidates made this announcement after a delegation from them held a meeting with the WBSSC Chairman Siddhartha Majumdar on Tuesday evening.

According to them, although during the meeting, the WBSSC official presented a data of the "genuine" candidates, the delegation members were not satisfied with the data since the commission claims those were not backed by mirror-images of the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets in the written examination for recruitment.

"We want the commission and the State Education Department to clarify why the mirror images are not being made public. Our question is why the services of those already identified as 'tainted' are not terminated as yet," said a protesting job loser.

The persistent demand of the job losers for the publication of the segregated list has irked Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Earlier in the day, she questioned why the “genuine” candidates were insisting on publication of the segregated list.

"What purpose will the segregated lists of 'genuine' and 'tainted' candidates serve for you? What do you all have to do with the list? Why are you getting trapped in provocation? There is no requirement for the lists. Your only considerations are whether you have the jobs or not and whether you are receiving the salaries or not. Leave the rest on us," Chief Minister Banerjee said.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court division bench of the Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar upheld the order of the Calcutta High Court's division bench of Justice Debangsu Basak and Justice Shabbar Rashidi last year cancelling WBSSC's entire panel for 2016 of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs.

The apex court also accepted the observation of the Calcutta High Court that the entire panel had to be cancelled because of the failure on part of the state government and WBSSC to segregate the "genuine" candidates from the "tainted" ones, who got jobs paying money.

- IANS