Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 10: The Central Bureau of Investigation has decided to form a Special Task Force (STF) to speed up the probe into the alleged “teachers’ recruitment scam” which has caused a major embarrassment to the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal.
With a large number of job aspirants agitated over the issue and have appreciated the CBI swooping on some present and former education department officials and ministers allegedly responsible for the scam, the expeditious probe by the CBI into the scam could cause further dent to the TMC vote bank on the eve of the 2024 Parliamentary elections.
The initial probe by the CBI into allegations of money being taken for appointments in State-run schools and the arrest of a former cabinet minister Partha Chatterjee by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had put the TMC government of Mamata Banerjee in a tight spot. The wave of protests by jobseekers and outrage over the recovery of huge amounts of cash from associates of TMC leaders have provided fresh ammunition to the Opposition BJP and the Left Front to target the government which is trying hard to shrug off the taint of corruption.
A senior official of the CBI said on Monday that the members of the STF to speed up the ongoing investigation into the recruitment scam would be reaching Kolkata soon to begin the probe into the alleged scam, he said. The STF will comprise seven senior officers – an SP, three DSPs, two inspectors and one SI drawn from New Delhi, Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Dhanbad, Bhopal and Bhubaneswar.
“With there being developments in the teachers’ recruitment scam in Bengal almost daily we need more officers to deal with that. We had written to the Delhi headquarters recently and these officers will be joining the probe,” said the official.
The former minister Partha Chatterjee who was arrested on July 23 last year by the ED is currently in jail custody at the Presidency correctional home. Several officers of the education department and a couple of ruling TMC leaders are also in custody for their alleged involvement in the scam.
According to the Central probe agency, the alleged irregularities in the WBSSC recruitment took place when Chatterjee was the Education Minister between 2014 and 2021. The arrest came a day after the ED recovered cash and jewellery worth ₹21 crore from a flat in south Kolkata that belonged to Arpita Mukherjee, a close associate of Chatterjee.
Chatterjee was not only a senior Cabinet Minister in charge of four key departments, including Industry and Parliamentary Affairs, but also the TMC’s secretary general. Five days after his arrest, the TMC removed Chatterjee from his ministerial position and all party posts. A Cabinet reshuffle followed and the party leadership, including Ms. Banerjee, distanced itself from the influential leader who remains behind bars.
The probe agencies have since then taken several former officials of the Education Department into custody in connection with the scam. Shanti Prasad Sinha, former adviser to the WBSSC, and Ashok Kumar Saha, former assistant secretary of WBSSC, were arrested on August 10, while Kalyanmoy Ganguly, former president of the WBBSE, was arrested on September 15. This was followed by the arrests of Subires Bhattacharyya, former WBSSC chairperson, on September 19, and Manik Bhattacharya, former chairperson of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) and TMC’s MLA from Palashipara, on October 11. While Chatterjee and Bhattacharya were arrested by the ED, the remaining officials were taken into custody by the CBI.
The pressure on the Banerjee government was kept up by a plethora of protests by the job-seekers which further intensified after the CBI joined the fray and picked up Chatterjee and others. Several of the protesters have pointed out that while the successful candidates in the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) examinations in 2014 and onwards were refused job, those who submitted blank answer-sheets in the exams but paid money to the minister and the officials were recruited as teachers in the government schools.
Palash Mondal, one of the protesters said they have been agitating on the streets for close to 600 days. “Our first demonstration lasted 29 days in front of the Kolkata Press Club. The second one raged for 187 days at Salt Lake’s Central Park. From November 2021, we have been sitting in protest in front of the Gandhi statue,” he said.
Also agitating are the candidates who had appeared for exams conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) for the recruitment of Group C and Group D employees in secondary and higher secondary schools under the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE). Candidates from remote districts have been taking turns to travel to the protest sites in the capital to ensure that there is no let-up in pressure on the government.
The protests had got momentum in May, last year, when he Calcutta High Court ordered the CBI to probe into the alleged irregularities in the appointment of teaching and non-teaching staff by the WBBSE in government sponsored and aided schools on the recommendations of the WBSSC.
Earlier, on May 13, a panel headed by Justice (retd.) R.K. Bag, which was constituted by the High Court, had submitted a report that said 381 appointments to Group C posts were made illegally by the WBSSC. The report also said the five-member panel formed in 2019 by the Education Department, when senior TMC leader Partha Chatterjee held the portfolio as Minister, for monitoring the recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff did not have any legal validity.
In its 172-page charge-sheet filed against Chatterjee at the Kolkata sessions court on September 20, the ED said he had set up six shell companies through which money generated from the scam was routed to buy property in the capital and other districts in the State. The ED told the court that it had so far seized cash, jewellery and property worth ₹103.10 crore linked to the former Minister and his associate, Ms. Mukherjee.
Documents, submissions, charge-sheets and reports filed by the probe agencies have mentioned the involvement of TMC functionaries and estimated that so far 8,163 persons secured jobs illegally: 3,481 in Group C, 2,823 in Group D, 952 in Classes IX and X, and 907 in Classes XI and XII.
The High Court’s scathing observations in the case and revelations by whistle-blowers have dented the image of the TMC government at a time when the Chief Minister is trying to project herself as a national leader who can pose a challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
