In big Calcutta HC ruling on Bengal TET scam case, relief for 32,000 teachers & a message to courts

New Delhi: A nine-year wait for certainty ended this week for thousands of primary teachers in West Bengal. In a major decision, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court has overturned the May 2023 ruling by Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay that cancelled the appointments of around 32,000 primary teachers, recruited on the basis of the 2014 Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET).

The bench of Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Reetobroto Kumar Mitra, in a 141-page judgment delivered 3 December and uploaded Friday, found that Justice Gangopadhyay’s ruling exceeded legal limits and caused disproportionate hardship to teachers who served for nearly a decade.

Notably, Justice Gangopadhyay resigned from judicial service in March 2024 and in two days, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) before