Calcutta High Court: In a writ petition challenging the West Bengal Livelihood Social Security Interim Scheme, 2025 (impugned scheme) that aimed to provide cash assistance to Group C and Group D of the non-teaching staff, whose jobs had been terminated overnight, a Single Judge Bench of Amrita Sinha*, J, opined that permitting the State to proceed with the impugned scheme would tacitly support fraudulent activity, cheating and corruption. Therefore, the Court granted an interim stay on the operation of the scheme and accordingly, restrained the West Bengal Government from providing financial assistance to the non-teaching staff of Groups C and D.
Background
The impugned scheme was challenged under three separate petitions which were disposed of by a common judgement. The impugned scheme was enacted to give monetary benefit to Group C and Group D of the non-teaching staff who had been rendered jobless overnight by the operation of the Supreme Court judgement State of West Bengal v. Baishakhi Bhattacharya, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 719. (Baishakhi case) Under the impugned scheme, eligible non-teaching staff of Group C or Group D or their distressed families were entitled to get cash assistance of Rs 25,000 and Rs 20,000 per month respectively, as livelihood support for family due to sudden unemployment and/or under humanitarian grounds.
The Baishakhi case (supra) challenged the validity of the recruitment process conducted by West Bengal Central School Service Commission, for appointment in the post of Group C or Group D non-teaching staff, on 8-8-2016. The Supreme Court had held the selection process to be violative of Articles 14 and 16 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court had also directed the termination of the tainted candidates and further ordered them to refund all remunerations and benefits received by them to the State exchequer along with interest calculated at 12 per cent per annum from the date of receipt of money to date of deposit.
The petitioners in the present petition were candidates who had been wait-listed during the selection process. It was the case of the petitioners that the impugned scheme had been published with the sole intention to frustrate the order passed by the Supreme Court. Once the Supreme Court had ordered refund of remuneration received, the State should not have introduced a scheme to financially assist such candidates. The petitioners had argued that the impugned scheme was violative of Articles 14, 16, 21, 144, 162 and 282 of the Constitution
Per contra, the State respondents argued that the petitioners had no locus standi to challenge the impugned scheme which had been floated as a welfare measure to provide life and livelihood to persons whose appointments were suddenly terminated.
Analysis, Law and Decision
The Court noted that there were two sets of candidates in the case: the appointed candidates and the wait-listed candidates. Both set of candidates qualified as unemployed jobless candidates. Giving out financial assistance to one set of jobless persons while depriving the other set of the same benefit was opined to appear discriminatory. The Court observed that the State most certainly had the legislative competency to pass such a scheme, but the State could not have employed a pick and choose method in formulating welfare measures.
The Court further observed that the impugned scheme sought to provide financial assistance to those persons who lost their jobs in accordance with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Baishakhi case (supra). The Supreme Court in that case had terminated the employment of those persons since their appointments were held to be a result of fraud which amounted to cheating. The Court opined that once the Supreme Court had held the appointments of those candidates to be a result of fraud, no person who was the beneficiary of a fraudulent act of the statutory authority, should be provided any support, especially from the public exchequer.
The Court further noted that if after hearing all parties in the writ petition, the Court decides that the impugned scheme is violative of the law, there wouldn’t be any scope of getting a refund of the money paid since those persons are not financially stable and would not be able to repay the money received. The same would amount to unjust enrichment of certain persons on the strength of the State treasury. The Court observed that the petitioners were also in need of financial assistance and as such were right to claim that they had been deprived of the benefits of the impugned scheme. The State’s action of providing payment to tainted candidates rather than obtaining refund from them called for judicial intervention.
The Court further noted that the impugned scheme was not making any provision for securing work and was also not providing any public assistance to any unemployed candidate. On the contrary it appeared that, the State was providing financial assistance to candidates whose job stood terminated because of cheating. The Court stated that paying persons gratuitously who were not serving the State but were either sitting at home or engaged elsewhere, did not appeal to the Court. Permitting the State to proceed with the Scheme would tacitly support fraudulent activity, cheating and corruption.
The Court opined that at that stage it could not have gone into the validity of the impugned scheme in its entirety without giving the State a chance to file an affidavit. Accordingly, the State was directed to file an affidavit in opposition within four weeks.
As an interim relief, the State was refrained from giving any effect to the impugned scheme till 26-9-2025 or until further order, whichever was earlier.
[Prokash Mandal v. State of W.B., 2025 SCC OnLine Cal 5037, decided on 20-6-2025]
*Judgement authored by- Justice Amrita Sinha
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For the Petitioner: Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya (Senior Advocate), Sudipta Dasgupta, Bikram Banerjee, Baibhav Roy, Arindam Sit, Firdous Samim, Gopa Biswas, Payel Shome, Swati Dey, Saikat Mallick, Advocates.
For the Respondent: Kishore Datta, (AG), Somnath Ganguly (AGP), Pratiti Das, Debanjan Mondal, Sandip Dasgupta, Mahima Cholera, Deepan Sarkar, Deepti Priya, Advocates
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