Calcutta High Court’s order to cabinet minister Partha Chatterjee to appear before the CBI for interrogation in connection with the alleged School Service Commission recruitment scam has come as a weapon for the Opposition to hit out at Trinamul and the Mamata Banerjee government.

The CBI questioned Chatterjee for around four hours.

Both the CPM and the BJP accused those at the helm of the state administration of trying to hide the SSC scam. Several organisations of the Opposition parties took to the streets and social media to attack the government.

Leading the attack on behalf of the BJP, Opposition leader Suvendu Adhikari dubbed the SSC scam as the “biggest case of corruption in post-Independent Bengal”.

“Partha Chatterjee will have to speak out now…. This happened under instructions from Mamata Banerjee and to protect the interests of her nephew Abhishek Banerjee,” Adhikari told journalists after he met governor Jagdeep Dhankhar.

Trinamul’s embarrassment multiplied after minister of state for education department, Paresh Adhikary, who was supposed to appear before the CBI on Wednesday following a high court order on Tuesday, disappeared on his way to Calcutta from Cooch Behar.

The BJP organised a rally in Cooch Behar demanding the removal of Paresh.

The SFI, the student wing of the CPM, took to the streets on Wednesday evening demanding the immediate arrest of Paresh. SFI secretary Srijan Bhattacharya alleged that police had attacked the rally he was leading to the CBI office at Nizam Palace, where Chatterjee was being interrogated.

State Congress chief and MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the Trinamul government had become a government of “forty thieves”.

Trinamul tried to turn the tables on the CPM and the BJP by referring to alleged irregularities in appointment of teachers in Tripura. “If you take the example of Tripura, because of a recruitment scam during the Left Front rule, more than 10,000 teachers lost their jobs. They have faced equal deceit from the Left and the BJP alike,” said Trinamul spokesperson Kunal Ghosh.

However, Ghosh also hinted that the party might distance itself from leaders and ministers facing charges of corruption.

“If even 0.1 per cent people have done something that has affected the lives of ordinary students and common men, then the law will take its own course,” he said.