Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed Manik Bhattacharya, former president of the state primary education board, to appear before the CBI by 8pm on Tuesday.
The judge also asked the agency to find out under which law Bhattacharya had destroyed the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets of 12.5 lakh of the 20-odd lakh candidates who had written the 2014 Teachers’ Eligibility Test for government-aided primary schools.
Hours after the order was passed, a special leave petition filed by Bhattacharya challenging the ruling came up for hearing in the Supreme Court. “The apex court fixed the case for hearing on Wednesday and issued an interim order restraining the CBI from taking any coercive measure against Bhattacharya for 24 hours,” said advocate Bimal Adhikari, who represented Bhattacharya in the high court.
Earlier in the day, acting on the high court order, an officer of the rank of assistant commissioner of Kolkata police visited Bhattacharya’s Jadavpur home in south Kolkata but apparently could not find him there.
The officer registered a general diary entry with the local Jadavpur police station mentioning his visit to Bhattacharya’s house and that he was not found there.
Bhattacharya had appeared before CBI investigators earlier as well. But this time, several lawyers said, he would have to face queries on a particular point: alleged destruction of OMR sheets.
A petition filed before Justice Gangopadhyay alleged that the state primary education board had in 2017 destroyed OMR sheets of over 12.5 lakh candidates who had written the 2014 TET, when Bhattacharya, now a Trinamul Congress MLA, was president of the body.
Allowing the petition, Justice Gangopadhyay had asked the board to submit a report. The board sent the report to the judge on Tuesday.
After going through the report — the content of which was not shared with reporters — the judge issued the order.
The judge asked the CBI to find out why the OMR sheets were destroyed by the board and gave the investigators liberty to arrest Bhattacharya, if necessary.
Earlier, the judge had asked the CBI to conduct a probe to find out whether any irregularities had taken place during the appointment of teachers in state-aided primary schools in West Bengal.
