Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed the Enforcement Directorate to probe whether Group D staff were recruited on the basis of a 2016 selection test against payment of money.
The judge said he wanted to know how much money was transacted in the process and who had taken the money.
“I strongly believe that a huge amount of money was transacted while recruiting Group D staff in schools by the SSC.... The CBI has shown enough courage while collecting the hard disk from Ghaziabad. It has been proved that a candidate who scored 0 was also given the job. Now, the ED will have to conduct a speedy probe to find out how much money was transacted in the process and who were the beneficiaries,” the judge said.
Earlier, following an order of Justice Gangopadhay relating to teachers’ recruitment in secondary schools, the ED had conducted raids and recovered over Rs 40 crore and jewellery and property documents linked to former education minister Partha Chatterjee and his associate Arpita Mukherjee. The two were arrested following the seizures.
The CBI has since arrested several former senior officials of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC).
Subires Bhattacharyya bail plea
The division bench of Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta on Wednesday rejected the bail petition of former WBSSC chairman and North Bengal University vice-chancellor Subires Bhattacharyya.
Bhatacharyya was arrested by the CBI on September 22 on the charge of tampering with OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets of aspirants for teaching and other jobs in secondary schools.
His counsel tried to establish that during the recruitment of staff in schools (after the publication of the merit list in 2019), his client was not the chairman of WBSSC. “Bhattacharyya was in no way connected in the matter. So he should be granted bail.”
The CBI lawyers opposed the prayer and said: “He was the key man behind the process of manipulating the OMR sheet.”
The judge also asked the WBSSC to file a report stating the names of the candidates, whose marks were found different as was seen in the OMR sheets and the hard disk collected by CBI from Ghaziabad.
English medium
Justice Aniruddha Ray of Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed the state education department to create a post of assistant teacher in a state-aided English-medium secondary school to accommodate Tathagata Banerjee.
Banerjee, had got the job of a mathematics teacher in a Bangali-medium school even after topping the 2016 TET panel and opting for an English-medium school.
His lawyer said: “Tathagata had no option but to move court.”
After a three-year legal battle, Banerjee won his case on Wednesday.