Bengal: EC exempts SSC officials from Assembly election duty The Election Commission of India has exempted officials of the School Service Commission (SSC) from participating in Assembly election-related duties, ensuring the ongoing teacher recruitment process in Bengal is not disrupted. This decision came after the SSC, which was managing the recruitment of teachers and non-teaching staff for classes 9 to 12, faced a staffing crisis due to the deployment of 24 of its employees for polling work. The move was announced on April 1, following a legal battle that had been ongoing since March 25. The SSC had approached the Calcutta High Court, seeking relief from the Election Commission’s directive to deploy its staff for election duties. The commission had initially assigned 24 SSC officials as polling officers on March 1, leaving only 11 staff members to handle the recruitment process. The SSC’s lawyer argued that this shortage would make it impossible to meet the Supreme Court’s deadline of August 31, 2026, to complete the recruitment of 25,753 teachers and non-teaching workers whose jobs had been canceled in April 2025 due to a corruption scandal. The SSC had previously requested the bench of Justice Krishna Rao of the Calcutta High Court to recognize its autonomy and assert that its staff could not be diverted for election work. The commission had stated that 35 employees of the SSC were handling both its administrative tasks and the recruitment process. However, the deployment of 24 of them for polling duties left only 11 staff to manage the recruitment, which included conducting interviews for thousands of positions. The Supreme Court had ordered the SSC to restart the recruitment process after invalidating the previous appointments, which were deemed corrupt.#supreme_court_of_india #election_commission_of_india #calcutta_high_court #school_service_commission #krishna_rao
