Terming
the alleged recruitment scam in West Bengal "systemic fraud", the
Supreme Court on Tuesday said authorities were duty-bound to maintain the
digitised records pertaining to the appointment of 25,753 teachers and
non-teaching staff.
A
bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and
Manoj Misra was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Calcutta High
Court's April 22 decision that invalidated the appointment of 25,753 teachers
and non-teaching staff in state-run and state-aided schools of West Bengal.
"The
public job is so scarce.... Nothing remains if the faith of the public goes.
This is systemic fraud. Public jobs are extremely scarce today and are looked
at for social mobility. What remains in the system if their appointments are
also maligned? People will lose faith, how do you countenance this?" the
CJI asked the lawyers representing the state government.
The
bench said the state government has nothing to show that the data was
maintained by its authorities and asked about its availability.
"Either
you have the data or you do not have it.... You were duty-bound to maintain the
documents in digitised form. Now, it is obvious that there is no data. You are
unaware of the fact that your service provider has engaged another agency. You
had to maintain supervisory control," the bench told the state
government's lawyers.
The
hearing would resume at 2 pm.
Earlier,
the state government had challenged the Calcutta High Court order, saying it
cancelled the appointments "arbitrarily".