– Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

West bengal’s teacher recruitment scams and scandals is a nightmare without end for the state’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government. It could well sink TMC and chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the imminent state legislative assembly election now only six months away.

In July 2022, education minister Partha Chatterjee, and his mistress, cinema actress Arpita Mukherjee, were arrested for involvement in the state’s high-profile multi-crore “cash-for-jobs” teacher recruitment scam. After three years in judicial custody, Chatterjee was released on bail last month (November 11). Arpita Mukherjee was released last year. It’s pertinent to note that on the day of Chatterjee’s arrest the Central government’s Enforcement Directorate seized Rs.20 crore in cash from Mukherjee’s home in upscale Belgharia.

Earlier, prominent TMC leaders, party members and senior officials including Manik Bhattacharya, TMC MLA and former chairman of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education; Santanu Banerjee and Kuntal Ghosh, TMC youth wing leaders; Kalyanmoy Ganguly, former president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education; and Subir Bhattacharya, former chairman of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) were arrested for neck deep involvement in teacher recruitment, exam malpractices and related scams.

Recurring scandals in public education in a state where quality education has traditionally been highly revered has aroused widespread indignation. Media reports are rife of aspirant teachers landing jobs after paying bribes of Rs.18-20 lakh and some recruited despite submitting blank answer sheets in the mandatory TET (teacher eligibility test). During the past three years in particular, teacher recruitment scandals have become a prolonged debacle damaging thousands of teachers who have become collateral damage in a war in which TMC grandees seem untouched. Following Chatterjee’s bail plea being granted, there’s widespread public outrage that the man at the centre of the scandal is walking free, while thousands of aspiring teachers continue to grapple with career disruption, income loss and social stigma.

Against this backdrop, Chatterjee’s release on bail has triggered a full-blown political slugfest, with all major parties racing to weaponise corruption of the education system in the run-up to the assembly elections in April-May. The opposition BJP is demanding Chatterjee’s re-arrest with BJP MLA and leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari demanding strict legal action against chief minister Mamata Banerjee, describing her as the “main beneficiary” of the teacher recruitment scandal. Meanwhile, the CPI-M is positioning itself as the only clean alternative party and has called for an independent judicial probe into the recruitments scam.

Moreover, in a state where capital and industry flight accelerated during 34 years of Communist rule, repeated scandals within the public education system have aggravated graduate unemployment. It is pertinent to note that a Supreme Court judgement of April 3, 2025, scrapped the appointment of 25,735 secondary and higher-secondary teachers appointed by the state government in 2016 because of testing and recruitment malpractices. Although subsequently, 13,000 were declared “untainted” and allowed to continue in service temporarily and collect salaries until the end of 2025, they were instructed to clear TET to become eligible for reinstatement.

The results of these TET exams was released on November 24 and document verification is currently underway. However, nearly 1,800 teachers were officially listed as “tainted” and barred from future recruitment.

Comments Biswanath Chakraborty, professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University: “After years of investigations, raids, televised money counts and political drama, the real masterminds are walking free. Instead, thousands who devoted their lives to teaching have been left jobless and humiliated, with families and futures destroyed.”

But while it’s undeniable that recurring teacher testing and recruitment scandals have extinguished the modest aspirations and dreams of millions of youth in a state where government school teachers’ jobs are highly prized, the most poignant victims of a dysfunctional K-12 education system are children enroled in the state’s 84,000 government and aided schools. With recruitment frozen, resulting in understaffed schools, tens of thousands boys are being pushed into exploitative informal labour and girls into early marriage. School dropout numbers are soaring. West Bengal records the nation’s highest secondary education dropout rate — 18.75 percent (according to a Union education ministry release dated January 7) — and 2.8 lakh fewer students have written higher secondary exams this year, signalling mass disengagement and despair.

“Education is the foundation of citizenship and dignity. Destroying public schools and sacking teachers does not lessen corruption — it destroys the only ladder of upward mobility for the marginalized. Their futures are being erased in silence far from media scrutiny and courtroom contentions,” says a depressed professor of Jadavpur University, who preferred to remain unidentified.