Kolkata, May 18 (UNI) West Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee, who has been asked by a single bench order of Calcutta High Court to depose before the CBI officials by 6 pm on Wednesday in connection with the recruitment scams in the government aided schools across the state, moved a division bench in the same court, to be heard at 3.30 pm. Single bench judge Justice Abhijit Ganguly earlier in the day ordered former education minister Partha Chatterjee ( now commerce and industries minister) to appear before the CBI officials at NIzam Palace in the city by 6 pm. The justice also suggested the minister, who is also Trinamool Congress secretary general, to step down as minister. The judge said corruption should not be tolerated in favour of building a transparent society. The order said if the minister failed to report to the CBI office by 6 pm on Wednesday, the CBI can take him into custody. The single bench order followed hours after Calcutta High Court’s division bench comprising justice Subrata Talukdar and justice Ananda Kumar Mukherjee held the single bench order of April 12 for the CBI probe into the SSC scam, which is now referred as ” public scam”.
The single bench also directed all five-member, who fraudulently recommended names of candidates in the recruitment should also appear before the CBI at 4 pm today. On Tuesday, the single bench of the high court asked State Minister for Education Paresh Adhikari to appear before the CBI in the SSC case. Sources in the high court said Adhikari on Wednesday had moved a division of justice Harish Tandon, who refused to hear the case. The hearing was scheduled at 2 pm. On May 14 the report submitted by the committee ( Bag) said that a five-member panel formed in 2019 by the Education Department, when senior TMC leader Partha Chatterjee held the portfolio as minister, for monitoring the recruitments of teaching and non-teaching staff did not have any legal validity. The committee, headed by Justice (retd) RK Bag, recommended criminal proceedings against four ex-state SSC officials and the incumbent president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education.
A committee constituted by the Calcutta High Court on Friday submitted a report on an alleged scam in recruitments by the School Service Commission (SSC), saying that 381 appointments for Group-C posts in the state government-run schools in West Bengal were made illegally. The committee, headed by Justice (retd) RK Bag, recommended criminal proceedings against four ex-state SSC officials and the incumbent president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education. It also sought disciplinary proceedings against six other former senior SSC officials. The report said that a five-member panel formed in 2019 by the Education Department, when senior TMC leader Partha Chatterjee held the portfolio as minister, for monitoring the recruitments of teaching and non-teaching staff did not have any legal validity. It stated that WBBSE president Kalyanmoy Ganguly was hand in glovey with former SSC adviser and chief of the five-member committee SP Sinha, in making the illegal appointments. Advocate Arunabha Bandopadhyay, a member of the Justice Bag committee, submitted the report.