WBSSC Recruitment scam: Ex-Edu Minister claims ignorance about botched processes in the Commission

Partha Chatterjee was questioned for seven and a half hours by the CBI in connection with the case. Earlier, the CBI had also asked for Chatterjee's income tax details
Pic: Edexlive
Pic: Edexlive

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday, May 25, grilled the former Education Minister of West Bengal, Partha Chatterjee for hours in connection with the alleged irregularities in West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment. 

The "opaque system" of publishing results on the WBSSC website led to the merit list being altered by miscreant WBSSC officials, IANS quoted a senior CBI official as saying. However, what surprised the investigating officers was that Chatterjee, who also happens to be the Trinamool Congress Secretary-General, seemed clueless about the process of result publication. He insisted on his ignorance of the process and claimed that he had no knowledge about the day-to-day functioning of the screening committee, which he had appointed, reported IANS.

On the botched result publication process, IANS quoted the CBI officials saying that had the entire merit list been published on the website, the fraudulent officers would not have got the chance of changing the merit list at a later stage. Chatterjee, who is currently West Bengal's Commerce and Industries Minister, was grilled for a total of seven and a half hours by the CBI. During that duration, he also claimed ignorance about the instructions given to save signatures of the Regional Chairpersons of the WBSSC on the commission's server. These signatures were used in recommendation letters later on. IANS also reported that the CBI had taken a couple of statements from Chatterjee on May 18 and May 25. They will corroborate these two statements with his statements in the latest round of questioning, along with the statements taken from members of the screening committee for further action. 

Earlier the CBI had sought details from the Income Tax Department on Chatterjee and West Bengal's Minister of State for Education Paresh Chandra Adhikari. It was the irregularities in the appointment of Adhikari's daughter as a higher secondary Political Science teacher at a state-run high school in Cooch Behar district that blew the recruitment scam wide open. Ankita Adhikari was appointed despite not featuring on the merit list and without attending the personality test for the post. A single-judge Bench of the Calcutta High Court had ordered the dismissal of Ankita Adhikari and had asked her to return the salary she had been collecting under her post at the high school for 43 months.

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