The high court on Wednesday expressed its dissatisfaction over the alleged failure of chief secretary B.P. Gopalika to submit an affidavit stating the reason for not giving concurrence yet to the CBI to initiate the trial process against arrested state government officials in connection with the alleged irregularities in school recruitments.
The division bench headed by Justice Joymalya Bagchi said it would have no option but to summon the chief secretary to the court.
Gopalika allegedly failed to carry out a March 22 order of the court asking him to file an affidavit by April 3 stating the reasons for the delay in granting approval to initiate the trial process. The accused officials were arrested by the CBI and the ED.
“It is unfortunate that even after the order issued by this court on March 22, no affidavit was placed from the office of the state chief secretary stating the reasons behind the delay in giving approval to the investigating agencies to initiate the process of trial against the arrested state officials,” Justice Bagchi said.
“The court will have to issue an order asking the chief secretary to appear before this court in person on the next date of hearing.”
Hearing the bail petitions moved by former minister Partha Chatterjee and the other accused in the case, the CBI counsel had said that the governor had approved the start of the trial process against Chatterjee.
“The Assembly has given its approval to start the trial process against two MLAs.... As for Subires Bhattacharyya, S.P. Sinha and a lot of other accused… the chief secretary’s approval is needed to start the process of trial,” the CBI counsel said.
He added that the CBI had applied to the chief secretary “months ago” but did not receive any reply. At this, the bench issued an order on March 22 asking the chief secretary to file an affidavit by April 3 stating the reasons for the delay in issuing the nod.
The chief secretary will now have to submit the affidavit by April 9 or deal with the summons to be present in person before the court the same day.