Days after the Enforcement Directorate arrested former Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and his close aide Arpita Mukherjee on money laundering and other charges, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday made its first arrest in the school-level recruitment scam taking into custody Dr SP Sinha a former Convenor of an advisory committee created by the State Government to supervise the recruitment procedures of the School Service Commission and Dr Ashok Saha a former Secretary and Chairman of the SSC.
The CBI arrested the duo after four rounds of interrogation during which they “not only evaded questions but also did not cooperate with the investigators,” sources said.
The State Government had earlier created a five-member advisory committee to advise the SSC — an autonomous body responsible for making appointments to all the school level posts — in appointments of Group C, D and secondary level teaching staff. The duo have been charged with criminal conspiracy and corruption in making appointments, etc sources said.
A judicial committee under Justice AK Bag formed by the Calcutta High Court had earlier indicted the members of the stated committee for illegally making appointments to hundreds of posts apparently in lieu of money and had advocated criminal charges against them.The Committee was formed when Partha Chatterjee was the Education Minister. Investigations have till now revealed 381 fake appointments out of whom 222 candidates not even appeared in any kind of examinations. The High Court has asked both the CBI and the SSC to find out the number of candidates who were given fake appointments.
According to sources in the CBI money might have played a big role in the fake appointments which may run into several thousands. About the modus operandi some sources said that a parallel channel of appointment was created by the advisory committee by-passing the SSC.
Accordingly SP Sinha would recommend the names of ineligible candidates and get appointment letters prepared through Saha and some other top officials before handing them over to the respective candidates.
“All these money that came from the channel went up to the topmost level of the government,” Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari said adding “at least 50,000 fake appointments have been given to ineligible candidates stoking a scam that could be in the vicinity of Rs 3,000 crore.”
Incidentally, Adhikari himself on Wednesday got a big respite from the High Court which turned down a PIL seeking order for the CBI to hasten up investigation against him in Narada and Sharada chit fund cases.
Meanwhile, in a related development and in the backdrop of increasing incidents of public booing of the TMC leaders after the arrest of Partha Chatterjee, eight TMC ministers on Wednesday held a joint press conference wondering why only they would face the public flak and why the Left and the Congress leaders would be left alone.
Among the senior TMC ministers were Firhad Hakim, Bratya Basu, Arup Roy, Malay Ghatak --- whose name has been embroiled in coal smuggling case --- and others who held a joint press conference to plead innocence and questioned why the opposition leaders were not being hauled up for same charges.
They were referring to a PIL filed in the Calcutta High Court over disproportionate assets that had allegedly been accumulated by them. The Court earlier ordered the petitioner to make Enforcement Directorate --- now investigating the money laundering part of the school level recruitment scam --- a party to the case.
“There is a misleading campaign going on again us just to heap insult on us just because there was an one off case of Partha Chatterjee … we are ashamed of what he has done but that does not mean that all the TMC men are thieves,” Firhad Hakim said adding the opposition was spreading only the half-truths.
“We have given a full declaration of our source of income during filing income tax returns. There is nothing wrong if there is an increase in your income. I have a business of my own, plus salary and perks as a minister,” Basu said wondering why the CPI(M) leaders like Suryakanta Mishra, Kanti Ganguli, Ashok Bhattacharya and Congress leader Adhir Chowdhury were not being probed as “there assets too have gone up.”
Chowdhury immediately hit back saying the “TMC leaders are trying to collect sympathy of the people,” adding earlier there was a public perception about their corrupt conduct and now all that had been proved through the recovery of crores of rupees from their coffers.
The CPI(M) leadership too challenged the State Government to “prove your charges.” A senior state committee leader said “the TMC is in power for the past 11 years … if they have cases against our leaders we challenge them top prove them and put our leaders in jail … they have the entire police administration with them.”
The PIL was filed in February 2017, seeking an investigation into the increase in assets of ministers and leaders between 2011 and 2016, disproportionate to the known sources of income.
The Kolkata mayor and state municipal affairs minister termed the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) as “Politically Interested Litigation”, aimed at targeting TMC leaders and maligning them.
“We have nothing to say about the court order and have full faith in the judiciary. We just wanted to point at the political tricks the opposition parties are playing,” he said.