Even as Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee returned to her old tactic of laying the blame at the Opposition door hours after the Supreme Court cancelled the entire recruitment panel of 2016, annulling the employment of about 26,000 school staff including about 5,000 teachers, the BJP and the Left demanded a jail sentence for the entire Trinamool Congress (TMC) Cabinet for allegedly presiding over one of the biggest scams that the State had ever seen.

“Resignation is a small word … The whole Cabinet including the Chief Minister should go to jail for what they have done with the careers of these thousands of school staff … and for this Mamata Banerjee should be held solely responsible … the salary of the ministers should be given to the sacked employees who had earned their jobs with hard work,” Union Minister and Bengal BJP president Sukanto Majumdar on Friday said.

Assuring the restitution of sacked employees’ jobs once his party came to power in 2026, State Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari said that “after eight months when the BJP will come to power will try to find out a new solution to this tangle … we will set up a commission and find out the corrupt and ineligible employees who had purchased their jobs in lieu cash … then we will find out the ways to restore the remaining staff to their posts.”

Upholding a previous order of the Calcutta High Court the Supreme Court had on Thursday cancelled 25,762 school level appointments on grounds of corruption and irregularity. This after the Bengal School Service Commission failed satisfactorily cull out the names that had obtained their jobs through corrupt means.

While the Thursdays order threw 26,000 lives into the realms of insecurity as many of those who had earned their jobs with hard work said they had no other way but to take the path of self-elimination lawyers warned about another one lakh school and other government employees were awaiting the same fate as their cases too were hanging in Calcutta High Court for adjudication. 

Holding the Chief Minister solely responsible for the entire in “institutional corruption” that had “finished the lives of thousands of youth,” Adhikari said the only reason why the Court had to throw the baby with the bathtub was because those in power were not ready to reveal the names of the tainted candidates.

“In their attempt to save the tainted the Government sacrificed the innocent employees and for this only the Chief Minister without whose wish not a leaf moves in the State is responsible … we want her to see her in jail,” Adhikari said.

This even as the Chief Minister has called a meeting of the school staff who lost their jobs following the Apex Court. “We have called a meeting of the victims … I appeal them not to lose faith as I have some plans for them and I dont want to reveal it now,” Banerjee said.

Meanwhile, retired Justice Abhijit Ganguli who had the first Judge to adjudicate the case in the Calcutta High Court and had passed an order a couple of years ago cancelling the entire 2016 panel said that there was still a way to save the jobs of the innocent staff.

“While adjudicating the case I had understood that there were many candidates who were innocent and had earned their jobs with hard work … I had directed the SSC to place a list of tainted and untainted candidates but they would not … finally about 8000 people were dismissed by me … if the Government had accepted this judgment and not preferred an appeal today about 18,000 employees would have been working … still I must say that forgetting politics all the sides should come together and try to save the innocent employees from this calamity,” he said.

Justice Ganguli who is presently a BJP MP said that a committee could be set up by the State Government chaired by either the Education Minister or the Advocate General or with him and senior counsel and CPI(M) MP Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya --- who fought the case till the Apex Court --- in the panel. “This committee in turn will try to sift out the eligible and ineligible names post which a review petition can be submitted before the Supreme Court for its consideration … but the question is we will have to shun politics to save the lives of those many thousand people,” he said. However, the TMC immediately rejected his suggestion. Senior MP Sudip Bandopadhyay said, “Abhijit Ganguli is an agent of the BJP … he utlilised his post to earn his entry into politics and become an MP … he is trying to play more politics here … we reject his suggestions.”