Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has directed West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee to appear before the CBI at 6 pm Wednesday in connection with an alleged School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam, being probed by the central agency.
An inquiry committee constituted by the Calcutta High Court had — in a report submitted last month — described how 609 allegedly illegal recruitments of Group ‘D’ staff had been carried out by the West Bengal Central School Service Commission in 2016.
Chatterjee, a close aide of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and a senior Trinamool Congress leader, was the minister in charge of education at the time. He is currently the minister of industry, commerce, and enterprise, IT and electronics and parliamentary affairs.
The minister moved a division bench of Justice Harish Tandon and Justice Rabindra Samanta against the summons. But the bench did not accept the matter for hearing, saying the files were not in order.
The high court Wednesday sought a report from the CBI on the matter by 2 pm Thursday. A single-judge bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay also directed the CBI to take Chatterjee into custody if he doesn’t cooperate with the investigation.
The bench also ordered members of a special committee — formed by the West Bengal government to oversee the appointments — to appear before the CBI at 4 pm Wednesday.
On 13 April, too, the high court had directed Chatterjee to appear at the CBI office to participate in the investigation, but a division bench of the court stayed that order hours later.
On Wednesday, a division bench of Justice Subrata Talukdar and Justice Ananda Kumar Mukhopadhyay hearing the case upheld Justice Gangopadhyay’s order, and said, “It is apparent that a public scam has taken place involving high-ranking officials of the education department of West Bengal government. The single bench was well within its powers and its order was not prejudiced. Single bench stands justified in its acts.”
The bench then sent the matter back to the single-judge bench, which ordered Chatterjee to appear before the CBI.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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