Bengal school job case: Partha Chaterjee personally shortlisted ineligible candidates

Kolkata, Oct 16 (IANS) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has got evidence against former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chattered, showing him playing a crucial role in personally shortlisting ineligible candidates by paying money for appointment and recommending their names.

Sources said that after taking personal initiative and effort in shortlisting such ineligible candidates for recruitment, the former state education minister forwarded the same to an erstwhile bureaucrat attached to the state education department.

Many whose names figured in the list were actually recruited at a later stage and are currently attached to different state-run schools in West Bengal.

Sources added that their officials secured the primary evidence in the matter from different documents seized by them from Shiksha Bhavan, the state education department headquarters at Salt Lake on the Northern outskirts of Kolkata.

Thereafter, the CBI officials integrated Chatterjee in the matter on Tuesday at Presidency Central Correctional Home in South Kolkata for hours. Sources added that during the interrogation Chatterjee made a number of inconsistent statements through which the investigating officials secured additional clues in the matter.

Chatterjee, who was arrested by Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials in July 2022, had been serving judicial custody for so long. On October 1, he was presented at the special court in Kolkata by CBI and following the permission of the court he was shown as arrested. However, the CBI did not seek Chatterjee’s custody.

Chatterjee was arrested by ED in July 2022, after the central agency’s officials seized huge cash of over Rs 50 crore, gold in the forms of bars, biscuits and ornaments from the twin residence of his close associate and actress Arpita Mukherjee, who was also arrested then. Like Chatterjee, she has also serving judicial custody since then.

–IANS

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