The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday conducted marathon raids at six locations in Bengal in connection with the bribe-for-job scam in the state school education department, including the residence of Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislator from Burwan Jiban Krishna Saha, officials of the federal agency said.
CBI officers said they seized some documents from Saha’s home. Saha could not be contacted for the comment.
CBI officers also raided a construction site in New Town on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata and quizzed several people in connection with the multi-crore teachers’ recruitment scam in West Bengal.
Officials said that CBI began search operations around Friday noon, shortly before Union home minister Amit Shah arrived in Bengal to launch the party’s campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and continued till night.
The suspected involvement of ruling TMC leaders in the job scam surfaced after the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is conducting a parallel probe in the case, arrested state education minister Partha Chatterjee and his aide Arpita Mukherjee on July 23, 2022.
In its first charge sheet filed on September 19, ED said it traced cash, jewellery and immovable property worth ₹103.10 crore linked to the duo.
Chatterjee, the TMC legislator from Kolkata’s Behala West constituency, was dropped from the government and suspended from TMC by chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
TMC legislator from Nadia district and former president of the primary education board, Manik Bhattacharya, was also arrested by ED on October 11 last year. He too is in judicial custody and has been named as a key accused in the ED’s second charge sheet.
ED had also arrested Kuntal Ghosh, one of the secretaries of the TMC’s youth wing, in January this year. According to ED officials, Ghosh had illegally collected at least ₹30 crore from job seekers.
At Friday’s rally, Shah referred to the seizure of around ₹50 crore from Arpita Mukherjee’s residence during the ED’s first raid and said, “The ED had to hire two trucks to carry the seized cash. The money belongs to unemployed youths of Bengal. TMC leaders should be ashamed.”
In May 2022, Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay ordered CBI to probe the appointment of non-teaching staff (Group C and D) and teaching staff by the West Bengal School Service Commission and West Bengal Board of Secondary Education between 2014 and 2021. The appointees allegedly paid bribes in the range of ₹5-15 lakh to get jobs after failing the selection tests.
It has been alleged that applicants paid ₹5 lakh to ₹15 lakh bribes to get the jobs after failing the selection tests.
A few thousand deserving candidates could not get jobs because of the scam. Their petitions are being heard by the Calcutta high court.
