SOUMEN NANDY Vs. STATE OF WEST BENGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Learned senior advocate for the State Mr. Kar has raised the point of maintainability and has submitted that the maintainability point be kept open and to be decided later.

(2.) However, I find that there cannot be any doubt about the maintainability of this writ application and I am satisfied from Annexure P-7 of the writ application that the writ application is not delayed. Annexure P-7 is an order passed by the appellate authority under the Right to Information Act, 2005. From that Annexure P-7 it appears that the Right to Information application was made in 2018. The first appeal in respect of the said RTI application was filed on 23/10/2018. The second appeal was filed before the Commission on 10/12/2018 and the date of hearing was 13/4/2021. Therefore, the question of delay on the part of the petitioner cannot come in the way of maintainability of the writ application. The petitioner appeared in Teachers Eligibility Test 2014.

(3.) Mr. Gupta, learned senior advocate for the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, has submitted that the petitioner's allegation in respect of the persons named in pages 74 and 75 of the writ application is baseless as they got one mark for one wrong question in Teacher Eligibility Test-2014 and after getting that one mark all of them have been qualified in the TET and, therefore, they have been recruited along with other candidates totalling to 269. He further submits that this was done as per the resolution dtd. 30/11/2017 communicated to the Chairperson of Hooghly, District Primary School Council dtd. 4/12/2017. In respect of other set of candidates, as appears in page 78 of the writ application, against whom the allegation is, they have been given appointment though some of them were not qualified, Mr. Gupta has submitted that he has to take instruction in this regard.