SHILLONG: The previous Congress-led government’s effort and that of a few other petitioners to get relief in the education scam failed on Thursday with the Supreme Court upholding the order of the High Court of Meghalaya to cancel the entire recruitment process and carry out CBI probe against those involved.
In its final verdict, the Division Bench of the Apex Court, comprising justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Rohinton Fali Nariman, said they do not find any ground to interfere in the directions of the High Court on November 2, 2017.
The Apex Court observed that there were serious irregularities in the selection process for appointment of assistant teachers in LP schools in Meghalaya.
The High Court in its order had asked the government to scrap the entire appointment of teachers carried out in 2010 after examining the CBI probe report and the subsequent report of the state-appointed High Level Scrutiny Committee, which found large-scale irregularities in the recruitment process when Congress legislator Ampareen Lyngdoh was the education minister.
Later, the intention of the government to file a special leave petition was to modify the High Court order so that the non-tainted candidates can continue to serve as teachers.
After scrapping the entire recruitment process, the High Court had given scope to tainted teachers for making appeals before a committee headed by the chief secretary to prove that they are not blemished with a condition that if the candidates cannot prove, they would not be allowed to apply for any government jobs in future.
The High Court also wanted the non-tainted teachers to apply for the posts afresh irrespective of their age though the entire recruitment process was cancelled.
According to the High Court order, another CBI probe was necessary to ascertain the criminal aspect of the scam involving politicians as the first CBI probe had named many legislators and others.
Following the High Court order, the CBI in Shillong had started the probe.
Another order of the High Court was for the CBI to carry out a wide probe into all centres where examinations for recruitment were conducted since the previous investigation by the CBI had limited its ambit to five centres.
Disposing of another related special leave petition, the court said the grievance of the petitioners was that they were not heard by the High Court.
“If it is so, they are at liberty to move the High Court within two weeks from today so that the High Court may hear their grievance, if they were not heard earlier. After hearing the parties, it will be open to the High Court to pass any further order in accordance with law,” the Supreme Court said.
