The West Bengal Governor C V Ananda Bose has approved the prosecution of two former top officials of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, announced at the Jana Raj Bhavan yesterday, Tuesday, November 18.

According to the Special Task Force official, the sanction order names Manik Bhattacharya, the former Chairman of the Board, and Ratna Chakraborty Bagchi, the Board's Secretary, who have been under scrutiny since the West Bengal School Service Commission (WB SSC) teacher recruitment scam of 2016, ANI reports.

The approval for prosecution comes after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) performed a thorough investigation and submitted its final report on the WB SSC scam.

The action is a key step in the continuing investigation into potential irregularities in primary school recruitment.

Both Bhattacharya and Bagchi have been under scrutiny since the alleged scam surfaced in 2016, prompting a CBI inquiry and legal proceedings. 

Investigations by the Calcutta High Court, Supreme Court, CBI and Enforcement Directorate found evidence of manipulated OMR sheets, inflated marks, destroyed original answer scripts and even “fake” candidates who were appointed without qualifying through the written exam or interview. 

Due to the scale of the discrepancies, the Calcutta High Court cancelled around 24,000 appointments and ordered a complete fresh recruitment, describing the episode as a “systemic fraud.”