Only Lord Krishna can crack the mutli-departmental and multi-layered recruitment scandals.” That was how an advocate representing the Enforcement Directorate on Monday put his case before a designated court in Kolkata while demanding custody of Ayan Sil a builder and a latest fish netted by the Agency presently investigating the multi-crore school level recruitment scam in Bengal.
The arrest of Sil a close aide of jailed Trinamool Congress leader Shantanu Banerjee has opened a new dimension in the recruitment scandal, ED told the court adding his arrest has unveiled a parallel scam in the municipal department.
A 38-hour raid in Sil’s house has yielded incriminating documents and hard discs which are a “data mine,” and have brought to the surface illegal appointment of at least 5,000 civic employees in 60 municipalities out of which seven are in North 24 Parganas bordering Kolkata only, the ED told the court.
For the first time the Agency has stumbled upon a detailed “rate chart” for jobs at Sil’s residence. According to this rate chart Group D employees including the sweepers, drivers etc were charged Rs 4 lakh per job while for Group C jobs including assistant teachers and typist an aspirant had to cough up Rs 7 lakh, the ED referring to the hard discs and documents said.
The Agency has also recovered several hundred original OMR sheets apparently referring to the 2012 Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) exams, sources said. Besides, like Shantanu Banerjee and Anubrata Mondal, the senior TMC leader of cattle smuggling fame, Sil too had taken recourse to at least 50 fake accounts to chanelise his black money, sources said.
Earlier after arresting Banerjee, a TMC leader from Hooghly district the ED had told the court that they had struck a “gold mine” adding how the CDR or call data recorder of his two mobile phones had yielded the names of some topmost politicians of the State.
“The names cannot be revealed in the open court considering its political sensitivity and hence they have been listed in the case diary,” the ED officials said leading the Opposition parties to immediately demand interrogation of such “senior most” leaders based in South Kolkata.
In Sil’s case too, the ED said the CDR has revealed the names of 4-5 “influential persons,” who played an important role in money transaction and functioning of the multi-departmental and multi-layered job racket, sources said.
The ED officials pointed out that apart from SSC and municipal job scam, the “data mine” recovered from Sil’s residence could also lead to a parallel recruitment scandal in Fire Brigade department too, adding the data were being studied in that respect.
Reacting to the Monday’s arrest Bengal Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari said he was contemplating a Public Interest Litigation seeking revelation of the educational certificates of the employees appointed in the past one decade.
“The TMC’s organized job syndicate has left no department untouched … I want someone to file a PIL so that the certificates based on which these people have obtained their jobs … most of these jobs were given to the close aides of the TMC leaders, MLAs, MPs, councilors etc,” he said.
When contacted, Bengal Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim said that he would soon order an internal inquiry to ascertain whether there were people who had obtained their jobs illegally.
Last eight months have seen recovery of cash and property worth several hundred crores and arrest of a number of senior ministers, MLAs, leaders, party strongmen and senior government functionaries including vice chancellors and secondary board chairmen.