Veteran lawyer and CPI(M) leader Advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya on Sunday launched a scathing attack on the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government, accusing it of orchestrating a “systematic fraud” in the 2016 West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment process.

Speaking after the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment on the case, Bhattacharya alleged that teaching posts were “openly sold in the market” under the TMC regime’s first major recruitment drive after returning to power. “It has become quite clear after the Supreme Court judgment that the government had deliberately vitiated the recruitment by fraud. The teacher’s job was openly sold in the market,” he told ANI.

The senior advocate further charged that the WBSSC was shielding favoured candidates by withholding full disclosure of names. “The government has not taken any honest step to implement the Supreme Court’s order. Even today, the SSC has not published the complete list of tainted candidates, an indication of how deeply corruption was perpetrated,” he added.

The remarks came days after the WBSSC released a list of 1,804 ineligible candidates, following the Supreme Court’s August 28 directive to put details of ‘tainted’ appointees in the public domain. The court upheld the Calcutta High Court’s decision to annul the appointments of more than 25,000 teaching and non-teaching staff recruited in 2016, citing “large-scale manipulations and fraud.”

The fallout has been massive. Thousands of teachers who lost their jobs after the court’s order have taken to the streets, staging demonstrations like the ‘Nabanno Abhiyan’ march to the state secretariat, demanding justice. The protests have highlighted the human cost of the scandal, with livelihoods upended and careers abruptly derailed.

The Supreme Court bench, led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar, ordered a fresh selection process, describing the recruitment scam as a betrayal of public trust. The judgment marks one of the most significant setbacks for the TMC government, which has been battling allegations of corruption in education recruitment for years.

For now, Bhattacharya’s fiery charge — that government jobs were reduced to commodities — encapsulates the deep anger and disillusionment spreading across Bengal’s education sector.