Kolkata, Feb 23, 2022, IANS

Kolkata, Dec 23 (IANS) The West Bengal government, which is already riddled with multiple scams relating to recruitment irregularities in the education sector, received yet another jolt on Friday as the Calcutta High Court ordered the cancellation of the entire 2018 panel of 1,500 new recruits in the fire services department.

This follows allegations of corruption and irregularities in the recruitment process.

Calcutta High Court's division bench of Justice Harish Tandon and Justice Prasenjit Biswas, while cancelling the entire panel ordered that not a single recruitment from that panel can be done.

The division bench also directed the state fire services department to publish a fresh panel within the next two months after thoroughly reviewing the allegations of irregularities on this count.

In 2018, the state fire services department issued a notification for recruitment of 1,500 fire operators. The written examinations and interviews were conducted and the panel was published.

Thereafter a number of candidates appearing for the examination and interview approached the Calcutta High Court alleging massive irregularities in the recruitment process.

There were mainly three charges against the state fire services department on this count.

The first charge was that several candidates in the general category were illegally given recruitment under the reserved category.

The second charge was that the recruitment process was continued ignoring some major mistakes in the questions at the written examinations.

The third charge was that in case candidates getting the same marks in the written examination, preferential treatments were given to certain candidates in the interview.