Justice Restores Teachers’ Dignity

The Calcutta High Court’s decision to reinstate over 32,000 primary teachers in West Bengal has come as a long-delayed correction in a saga where law, livelihoods, and political currents became dangerously entangled. These teachers, recruited through a Teachers’ Eligibility Test conducted in 2014, had already put in nearly nine years of service when a single-judge verdict abruptly snatched away their careers. That earlier verdict, delivered by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay on the eve of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, ordered their dismissal on the ground that an aptitude test had not been conducted. The judgement fell like a thunderbolt. Soon after, the judge resigned from the Bench, contested elections on a BJP ticket, and entered Parliament. In retrospect, the sequence of events invites uncomfortable questions.

The political backdrop cannot be brushed aside. At the time, the opposition BJP was attacking the Trinamool Congress government relentlessly on issues of corruption in recruitment. Allegations of irregularities and “hanky-panky” dominated public discourse. Against this charged atmosphere came a verdict that caused mass terminations without distinguishing between alleged wrongdoers and thousands who had cleared tests and worked for years in classrooms. The two-member Bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra has now brought some balance back into the scales. Their ruling makes it clear that the facts of the case did not justify branding the entire recruitment process as irredeemably flawed. Crucially, there was no proof that the selected candidates had paid bribes or exerted influence on the board authorities.

Equally important is the court’s recognition that none of the appointed teachers was shown to be professionally incompetent. On the contrary, they had been working in primary schools for nearly a decade. Even if there were specific instances of corruption, the judgement rightly notes that such lapses could not warrant a wholesale purge of the entire cohort. The human cost of the earlier verdict was staggering. After nine years of steady employment, these teachers had built lives, families, and financial commitments around their jobs. The sudden loss of income shattered that stability overnight. Law cannot be blind to such realities, especially when guilt is not established on an individual basis. The court has also underlined a key principle: a handful of disgruntled candidates found ineligible cannot be allowed to dictate terms and invalidate an entire recruitment exercise. Collective punishment, when not anchored in solid proof, undermines public faith in both institutions and justice. Judges, like Caesar’s wife, must remain above suspicion. A swift transition from the Bench to the hustings inevitably casts a shadow over past rulings, however legally reasoned they may appear. The restoration of these teachers is, therefore, not just about jobs; it is about repairing the credibility of the system.