West Bengal: TMC, BJP hail SC order in school jobs scam

Kolkata: The ruling and opposition parties of West Bengal on Tuesday lauded the Supreme Court's ruling into the infamous 2016 School Service Commission (SSC) jobs scam, which has put the appointments of 25,753 state school education department employees at stake, in their own takeaways. 

While ruling Trinamul Congress hailed the SC for putting an interim stay on the Calcutta High Court order terminating the 25,753 jobs over corruption, BJP praised the apex court for allowing the CBI to continue its probe in the scam.

TMC supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who earlier opposed the HC order and legally backed the job losers, posted on X-handle, “I am really very happy and mentally relaxed on receipt of justice at the highest Court of the land. Congratulations to the entire teaching fraternity and my humble regards to the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India.”

Her MP nephew Abhishek Banerjee, who is the TMC national general secretary, stated, “The Honourable Supreme Court has DEFUSED the BJP's ‘EXPLOSIVE’ hurled last week to malign Bengal's image and destabilize WB government. TRUTH HAS TRIUMPHED! We will continue to defy all odds and stand shoulder to shoulder with the people until our last breath.”

However BJP Rajya Sabha MP Shameek Bhattacharya called Mr Banerjee's statement “laughable” and said, “The SC clearly termed the scam a ‘systematic fraud’ which is a shame to TMC. It is true that an interim stay has been given but that doesn't mean the CBI probe has been rejected in the scam. The CBI probe will continue. The state government tried to stop it legally but failed.”

On the other hand, CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty pointed out, “The SSC finally admitted at the SC that around 7500 got jobs illegally. That means the rest are legal. However the SC has not made any conclusion on them. Our demand is to identify the illegal appointments and reinstate the legal ones."