Anantadeb Adhikari, a former Trinamul Congress MLA and a current municipal chairman, on Tuesday admitted that he had sent a letter to minister Partha Chatterjee in 2016, recommending the names of five party supporters for Group D jobs under the West Bengal School Service Commission.

Adhikari said he had sent the recommendation on his official letterhead following a directive from the then education minister to the effect.

“In 2016, the then education minister Partha Chatterjee had asked Trinamul MLAs to send the names of party workers for Group D post jobs under the West Bengal School Service Commission. Accordingly, I had sent five names to the minister on my official letterhead,” said Adhikari.

None of the five candidates, however, got the job, claimed Adhikari, who had been the MLA of Maynaguri from 2016 to 2021.

Sources in the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had claimed on Sunday that they had found a letter of recommendation from Adhikari among different documents that they had seized from a house of Chatterjee. The ED sources said they had also recovered from the minister’s house another letter from Adhikari with 48 roll numbers of candidates who had appeared in SSC recruitment exams for upper primary school teachers.

Adhikari, however, denied that he had sent such a list. “It is not true. I have not sent any such list of roll numbers,” he said.

The admission of the recommendation from Adhikari — who had been defeated by the BJP in the 2021 Assembly polls and later became the chairman of the newly-formed Maynaguri municipality — left Jalpaiguri district Trinamul leaders red-faced.

While district Trinamul president Mohua Gope and other leaders declined comments, party insiders said Adhikari should have refrained from such remarks.

“He has simply endorsed the ED’s allegation…. This is not something that the party needs at this hour. It seems he panicked as the central agency mentioned the seizure of his letter after arresting Partha Chatterjee and tried to come clean on the issue,” said a senior Trinamul functionary in Jalpaiguri.

Adhikari is the second Trinamul leader whose name cropped up in connection with alleged anomalies in the SSC recruitment. Earlier, Mekhliganj Trinamul MLA and minister of state for education Paresh Adhikary had to face CBI interrogation and his daughter Ankita had lost teacher’s job over alleged irregularities in her appointment at a school in Mekhliganj in 2018.

Jalpaiguri district BJP president Bapi Goswami noted that while confirming that he had sent the recommendation letter, Anantadeb had also come up with another important revelation.

“He has said Partha had asked Trinamul MLAs to send recommendations for SSC jobs. We hope the ED will find out how many other MLAs had sent such letters to the minister and who had got the jobs based on the recommendations,” said Goswami.

BJP insiders said the party had started collecting data about all relatives of Trinamul leaders in Jalpaiguri district, including some elected representatives at local bodies, who had been appointed as primary school teachers in the past 11 years.

“We have found out that around 50 family members of Trinamul leaders got jobs. We suspect there are anomalies in their recruitment and want the ED to probe them. If the ED does not act, we will take legal recourse,” said a BJP leader.