Judicial extravagance is as unacceptable as administrative indulgence. Take the case of nearly 16,000 teaching and non-teaching staff in West Bengal who have been rendered jobless. What’s worse, they have also been asked to return the salary they received with a 12% interest. Most of them appeared for a teachers’ eligibility test (TET) and an interview before they were appointed on the basis of a rank list published by the relevant authority. It was alleged that some candidates, who would have been rejected, were able to find their names on the list because they had greased the palms of those in power. The judge who ordered a CBI inquiry into the case later resigned from the Kolkata High Court to join the BJP. He went on to suggest that the Trinamool Congress could be finished by putting some leaders in jail.
Another judge hearing the case did not wait for the report of the investigating agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI before ordering the cancellation of the whole list and sacking all the nearly 16,000 staff. A large majority of them had qualified for the job, not by paying a bribe but by getting good grades in the TET. How will they return the salary, which they would have spent to keep their hearths burning? The court should have sacked only those who paid bribes. Its decision is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even the BJP chief in West Bengal has sympathised with the majority of the teachers who qualified for the jobs because the decision may boomerang on the party. There are lakhs of vacancies in the central and state governments, but they are not filled. Instead, contractual appointments are made, even in the Army. Small wonder that unemployment is at the highest level in 45 years!
