Disturbances in appointments by West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) is becoming a cause of embarrassment for the Trinamool Congress government. with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is scam investigation As per the direction of the Calcutta High Court, the Enforcement Directorate has also started a probe into the money laundering allegations in the case. Protests are taking place almost daily in Kolkata.
For the past several weeks, police have been finding it difficult to stop protests near the offices of the State Education Department in Salt Lake. On Friday, students and youth wing members of Left parties led by state president of DYFI Meenakshi Mukherjee tried to gather in front of Acharya Bhawan, the headquarters of WBSSC, to protest against the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of teachers. Non-teaching staff in government schools. The police detained several student and youth activists.
Two Ministers of West Bengal – Minister of State for Education paresh officer and Minister of Industry and Commerce Partha Chatterjee CBI has been interrogating since last one week. On Wednesday, Mr Chatterjee, general secretary of the Trinamool Congress, was questioned for nearly eight hours. On the directions of the Calcutta High Court, the central agency has registered four FIRs – two in April and two in May. Officials of WBSSC and members of an advisory committee constituted by Mr Chatterjee have been named in the FIR.
The investigation of the FIR reveals that fraud and criminal conspiracy have been hatched to appoint candidates who are not selected on the basis of merit. For example, an FIR by the CBI on May 20 states that the accused collected Group C vacancies in an unauthorized manner after the expiry of the recruitment board on 18.05.2019 in violation of the provisions of the School Service Commission Rules, 2009 , and then issued recommendations of unsuccessful candidates for those vacancies in the absence of their knowledge by issuing fake memos of Regional Commissions and using scanned signatures of Chairmen of Regional Commissions.
According to the FIR, Shanti Prasad Sinha, a senior official of WBSSC, submitted fake recommendation letters to another officer, Kalyanmoy Ganguly, after the panel was exhausted. Kalyanmoy Ganguly, in turn, directed the Board’s technical officer Rajesh Lyek to prepare appointment letters on the basis of fake recommendation letters, “bypassing the usual chain of hierarchies and without sending those recommendation letters to the appointments section. Board of Secondary Education, West Bengal”, the document added.
Earlier, as per the direction of the Calcutta High Court, a committee headed by retired judge RK Bagh had examined the appointment of Group C and Group D staff in government schools.
In the FIR related to Paresh Chandra Adhikari, the agency said that the merit list prepared for the appointment of Assistant Teachers (Political Science) in Class X-X on the basis of an advertisement published in the year 2016 would be “adjusted and appointed to Ankita”. was changed to. Adhikari, daughter of West Bengal Minister, Paresh Chandra Adhikari, removing other candidates in the list”.
What is surprising is that the Trinamool Congress leadership, which has been vocal against any probe by central agencies, has not come forward to the rescue of the ministers whose names surfaced in the scam. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s sole reference alleged irregularities in WBSSC appointments during the Left rule and threatened to launch a probe. Since the irregularities are so obvious, the ruling party is not trying to stand by the accused. Even former WBSSC officials have come out in the open alleging political interference in the irregularities. The issue has given an opportunity to both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left parties to not only target the state government but also stage protests.
In the last few weeks, the irregularities in the recruitments by WBSSC have had a massive impact on other job seekers. The protests have been held by nursing students, job aspirants and job seekers in colleges appearing for the West Bengal Public Service Commission examination alleging irregularities in appointments.