Ex-Bengal minister’s bail on hold after court’s split verdict in school jobs scam

Former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee and four others did not get bail in the state School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam case as the Calcutta High Court delivered a split verdict in the case. While the other four suspects were granted bail, the bail to Chatterjee and the remaining accused were put on hold. The High Court will now decide on a third bench that will hear the case.
Chatterjee and the co-accused had filed bail pleas before the High Court and the matter was pending before a division bench of Justice Arijit Bandyopadhyay and Justice Apurba Sinha Roy.
While Justice Bandyopadhyay approved the bail of all the nine accused who appealed before the bench, Justice Roy decided against granting bail to Chatterjee, a former state education minister, and four other former education department officials – Subiresh Bhattacharya, Ashok Saha, Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay and Shanti Prasad Sinha.
As a result, the case will go back to TS Sivagnanam, the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, who will create a new bench that will decide the bail pleas of Chatterjee and the four other accused in the matter.
Chatterjee was arrested on July 23, 2022, by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the state school recruitment scam case and was later roped in by the CBI. The four department officials were subsequently arrested by the CBI in the case.
The former Trinamool Congress leader, who is lodged in jail for more than two years now, moved bail applications both before the High Court and the Supreme Court on multiple occasions in the past. But, his applications were rejected by the court’s single bench and division benches.
Banerjee had also filed a bail plea in cases registered against him by the ED. A bench of Justice Tirthankar Ghosh of the Calcutta High Court, however, had dismissed that plea after the hearing concluded in April this year.
The scam came under the spotlight after Partha Chatterjee and several officials from the West Bengal School Service Commission were arrested in July 2022 over their alleged involvement in the illegal teachers’ recruitment.
Following Chatterjee’s arrest, the ED seized around Rs 50 crore in cash and jewellery worth over Rs 1 crore from the residences of Arpita Mukherjee, a close aide of Chatterjee, during a raid. Mukherjee is currently lodged in Presidency Correctional Home.
The CBI and ED are conducting a probe into the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of Group C and D staff and teachers in government-run and aided schools in West Bengal.
In 2014, a notification for the appointment of teachers through the State Level Selection Test (SLST) was issued. However, the recruitment process did not commence until 2016, when Partha Chatterjee was serving as the state education minister.
As the recruitment process began, the Calcutta High Court was inundated with petitions alleging irregularities. Petitioners claimed that individuals who scored lower marks were ranked higher on the list, and some applicants who were not even on the merit list received appointment letters.