About 1,000 former Group C and Group D staffers from West Bengal’s 2016 recruitment panel have failed to clear the written examinations conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), closing what they viewed as their final opportunity to return to government service after losing their jobs under a Supreme Court order.
The results were declared on Thursday night, according to a report by the Times of India – Kolkata. The former employees had been waiting for more than three and a half years to return to their workplaces after working for seven years before their appointments were cancelled. Their employment and salaries were halted after the Supreme Court’s April 3, 2025 order, which resulted in 25,753 teachers and staffers losing their jobs.
The examinations were held as part of the recruitment process for vacant non-teaching posts in West Bengal’s schools. Around 6.8 lakh candidates appeared for the Group C written examination on March 1, while approximately eight lakh candidates took the Group D written examination on March 8. More than 3,000 people from the 2016 recruitment panel who had lost their jobs reportedly appeared in the tests.
The commission has called about 27,000 candidates for interviews for 5,488 Group D vacancies and nearly 11,000 candidates for interviews for 2,989 Group C vacancies. The numbers show the scale of competition facing candidates seeking appointments through the fresh recruitment process, including former employees attempting to regain positions they had previously held.
The next stage will involve physical verification of original documents and oral interviews. WBSSC is expected to announce the dates for these stages on its official website. The commission has also uploaded the full list of candidates who qualified for the next phase.
The results have triggered renewed concern among former staffers and their supporters. Amit Mandal, a member of the Staffers Rights Forum, told the Times of India – Kolkata that many former employees had wanted a separate examination because they were competing with fresh candidates while dealing with the mental strain caused by the loss of their jobs. He said some former staffers who cleared the written examination were placed near the bottom of the list and could face further competition in subsequent competency tests.
Mandal also disputed the broad treatment of the former panel, saying the candidates from the 2016 panel had obtained their jobs on merit and that those identified as tainted had been barred from taking the examinations. His comments represent the position of the Staffers Rights Forum and were not accompanied in the supplied report by a response from the state government or the commission.
The dispute reflects the administrative consequences of the cancelled recruitment process: former employees are being required to compete again for a limited number of posts, while the state moves to fill vacancies through a new selection exercise. For the candidates who did not qualify in the written examination, the process has ended at this stage. For those who remain in contention, document verification and interviews will determine whether they progress further toward appointment.
The immediate next step is the publication of the schedule for physical verification and oral interviews on the WBSSC website. The final outcome will depend on performance in those stages and the number of candidates selected against the 5,488 Group D and 2,989 Group C vacancies.
