North Bengal development minister Udayan Guha said on Sunday that he, too, had recommended names for government jobs when he was the Cooch Behar district secretary of the Forward Bloc and the Left Front was in power in Bengal.

On Saturday, the Dinhata MLA of the Trinamul Congress had said even his father — veteran Forward Bloc leader and former state minister Kamal Guha — had also engaged in recruitment-related irregularities.

“There was a quota system during the Left regime. Every constituent of the Left Front had the opportunity to appoint some candidates, who usually were party workers or their family members, to government posts. When I was the district secretary of Bloc, I also endorsed some names,” Guha said on Sunday.

The minister said as all such recruitments had been made through recommendations, many deserving candidates had suffered.

“Those days, there was a similar practice to put candidates in medical courses as the number of seats was less. It was common to provide jobs to party workers.... like I inducted three youths of our party as attendants after I became a minister,” Guha said.

Guha had emerged as an important leader in Bloc, particularly after the death of his father in 2007. He became the MLA of Dinhata in 2011. In September 2015, Guha quit Bloc because of differences with the state party leadership and joined Trinamul in the following month.

Sayantan, the minister’s son, also batted for his father on Sunday. He said during the Left rule, his grandfather (Kamal Guha) had helped many poor people and provided jobs to several of them.

Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, said: “It is unfortunate that he is raising serious allegations against his father to get closer to the Trinamul leadership.”

CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty, on the other hand, demanded a probe.

“If Udayan Guha has so much information about his father’s alleged corruption, he should ask the government to conduct a probe,” said Chakraborty