CBI makes 1st arrests in Bengal job scam: 2 from Partha’s board

KOLKATA: In its first arrests in the teachers’ recruitment scam, the CBI on Wednesday took into custody two senior members of the five-member advisory panel set up by then West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee to oversee school appointments. The two arrested officials — panel convenor and School Service Commission (SSC) adviser Santi Prasad Sinha and SSC secretary Ashok Kumar Saha — are among five named by the agency in its FIR.
Earlier, a committee appointed by the Calcutta high court had held that the setting up of the advisory panel itself was “illegal”. The CBI is probing the irregularities in school appointments on the directions of the HC.
Sinha and Saha were arrested after hours of questioning at the CBI’s Nizam Palace office here. The agency has accused the duo of hiding facts and trying to mislead the investigation. They were taken to Sambhunath Pandit Hospital for medical examination and brought back again to the CBI office for further questioning. They will be produced in court on Thursday.
Earlier in May, the CBI had twice questioned Chatterjee on the functioning of the advisory panel that allegedly manipulated the State Level Selection Test (SLST) merit list to accommodate people who didn’t even qualify the written test.
In a statement on Wednesday, the CBI said the two arrested officials would “identify vacancies” in Group-C posts in state-run schools in an “unauthorised manner” after the expiry of the panel on May 18, 2019 and “make recommendations of unsuccessful candidates” against those vacancies. They also issued “fictitious memos” by scanning signatures of chairpersons of Regional Service Commissions. The recommendations were not sent to the appointments committee of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) and the appointments were made “bypassing the normal chain of hierarchy”.
In a related development, the ED on Wednesday summoned former West Bengal Board of Primary Education chairman and Trinamool MLA Manik Bhattacharya for questioning next week.