- By Abhishek Sheoran
- Tue, 08 Apr 2025 05:28 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Former Congress chief and LoP in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, on Tuesday wrote to President Droupadi Murmu, seeking her intervention to address the anguish of Bengal teachers, whose appointments were scrapped by the Calcutta High Court in an order upheld by the Supreme Court.
In his letter, he urged that the teachers selected through fair means by the West Bengal government in 2016 be reinstated.
“Madam, you have served as a teacher yourself. I am sure you understand the enormous human cost of this injustice – to the teachers, their families and their students. I request you to kindly consider their request favourably and urge the government to intervene in the matter to ensure that candidates selected through fair means are allowed to continue,” the letter reads.
The Raebareli MP said discrepancies during appointments should be condemned and justice should be served but people selected through fair means treated on par with tainted teachers was a serious injustice.
“Both tainted and untainted teachers have lost their jobs. Any crime committed during recruitment should be condemned, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. However, treating teachers selected through fair means on par with tainted teachers is a serious injustice,” he added.
I have written to the Honourable President of India, Smt. Droupadi Murmu ji, seeking her kind intervention in the matter of thousands of qualified school teachers in West Bengal who have lost their jobs following the judiciary's cancellation of the teacher recruitment process.
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 8, 2025
I… pic.twitter.com/VEbf6jbY2F
In a major blow to the West Bengal government, the Supreme Court upheld the Calcutta High Court's decision on Thursday, which had completely annulled a "tainted" selection process under which the appointments of nearly 24,000 teachers and non-teaching staff were made in government and aided schools across the state.
On April 22 of the previous year, the High Court had ordered that all 23,123 appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff be declared invalid, whether they were corrupt or not.