Over 25,000 people are without a job in West Bengal—roughly as big as the crowd at the recent India-Pakistan cricket match in Dubai. People with ailing parents and young children, and EMIs and rent to pay. They’re not out of work because a factory shut down. They’re jobless because a few honourable men in the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government – including a senior TMC minister – tried making a quick buck by selling their jobs for cash. The jobs of teachers, watchmen, and other school staff.
They fiddled the whole education system so badly for profit and tried so hard to cover up their crime that the Supreme Court gave up trying to untangle the mess of missing OMR sheets. With no agency able to separate the wheat from the chaff – those who had paid hefty bribes for jobs from those who hadn’t – the court was left with no option but to sack all.
Can Mamata Banerjee bluster and brazen her way out of the monumental mess that is the Bengal teacher recruitment scam?
Also read: Heckling Mamata Banerjee in Oxford guarantees her a hero’s welcome in Kolkata
Mamata’s strategy
The Assembly elections are now exactly one year away, and Mamata Banerjee is quickly putting her strategy in place – deny responsibility, blame others, and play the victim card. She is not just portraying herself as a victim, targeted for being the lone crusader against Bharatiya Janata Party, but also Bengal and its people.
Sample some of her paraphrased responses to the Supreme Court’s verdict in the teacher appointment case:
- I respect the judiciary but I cannot accept the judgment, she said, hinting at politics behind the court’s final decision.
- I cannot be blamed. Government had no role in the School Service Commission, which sold jobs for cash. SSC is an autonomous body.
- How many people can you blame for the same crime? Partha Chatterjee, former TMC leader and education minister under whose watch the scam allegedly happened, has been in jail since July 2022, after cash and gold worth around Rs 50 crore were found in his friend’s flat.
- Why is Bengal being targeted? Why are Bengal’s youth being targeted? If 25,000 teachers are suddenly put to grass, who will teach the students? Who will turn out doctors, engineers, IAS officers, teachers?
And finally, Mamata has raised the ghost of the Vyapam scam. Unearthed in Madhya Pradesh in 2013, it involved large-scale fraud in government job recruitment exams for teachers, food inspectors, traffic constables, and forest guards, as well as medical entrance examinations. Question papers were leaked, proxy candidates took exams, and answer sheets and mark sheets were manipulated. Between 23 and 40 cases of unnatural deaths were linked to the scandal.
Allegedly taking roots in the 1990s, the Vyapam scam blossomed in the 21st century, when the BJP came to power in the state in 2003. Scores of people were charge-sheeted. The state’s technical education minister, Laxmikant Sharma, was arrested and jailed.
Why is Mamata Banerjee invoking Vyapam now? Perhaps to take a swipe at the history of corruption in a BJP-ruled state, and to highlight how no BJP chief minister resigned when the scam occurred.
She can also point toward the NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) scam of last year, a blot on the central BJP government for which no minister resigned.
But this whataboutery, this invoking of BJP’s many scams has a flip side. It tars everyone with the same brush, including the one invoking.
Also read: Bengalis love a good ghost story. This time, it’s in the voter list
Paying the price
Who is paying the price? Teachers and non-teaching staff, all tainted whether guilty or not. Lakhs of students in government schools are bearing the brunt too, particularly those in the seniormost classes preparing for exams crucial to their careers.
In Murshidabad’s Farakka town, the nearly 10,000-student strong Arjunpur High School lost 36 teachers. Debipur Karunamoyee Balika Vidyayatan in Kultali South, which had six teachers for its 175 students, is now left with only four.
It is not a happy situation for Mamata Banerjee, and it could turn nastier. On 8 April, the Supreme Court will hear a special leave petition filed by the state government, challenging a Calcutta High Court order directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to conduct a probe into the matter. The High Court had directed the CBI to investigate the creation of supernumerary posts, accommodating more than just the selected candidates. If CBI gets the nod from the Supreme Court, more trouble could follow for top ministers and bureaucrats.
It is the kind of trouble Banerjee does not need. Not a year ahead of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections. Everyone from the Opposition now wants Mamata to go – BJP, Communist Party of India-Marxist, to the Congress party. If she doesn’t resign, the BJP is promising a rout in 2026.
The political skirmishing will travel this predictable, well-trodden path up to elections next year, and until counting day, we will never know whether the despair of 25,000 scammed people will impact the poll outcome. On test, Mamata’s political ingenuity in dealing with the scam—will it turn into an albatross around her neck or will it be water off a duck’s back?
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
Why is Sagarika Ghose not writing on this? The verbal acrobatics to justify this corruption will be fun to read. Why send stooges?
Please point out that in a recently released/leaked tape apparently held by CBI, 3 TMC ministers were heard discussing how big the money making opportunity is from this scam, who can get how many candidates who are willing to pay, how to distribute the cut money etc. In the 72 minutes conversation, Abhishek Banerjee was named 71 times, with 1 minister saying Abhishek will be happy with 15 Cr as his share. This has been reported several times by Anandbazaar Patrika.
I wonder why there is no action against Abhishek Banerjee yet by CBI or the center? It’s time to go for Mamata’s neck too. That woman, her kin and her party has done so much damage to the state that even the tyrannical cpm govt of yesteryears will be ashamed and seem holder at this point.
Mamata and TMC are also responsible for the death of Abhaya. Your own reporting at the time was disappointing to say the least, Monideepa. Where else has state appointed goons had the audacity to barge in, harm the modesty of an on duty doctor right in the heart of Kolkata. The whole of Bengal needs to be ashamed for their/our inability to force this govt out. Before that was Kamduni which too was hushed up by the govt. Mamata deserves nothing but extreme personal and physical pain when her time comes. Along with her, her whole family all partymen and lawyers such as Kapil Sibal should be crucified and left to rot on stakes by the roadside.
Why is Ms. Monideepa Banerjie invoking the Vyapam scam now?
Perhaps to defend Ms. Mamata Banerjee and her utterly corrupt administration. A lame attempt at telling people that corruption has happened in BJP ruled states too and therefore Ms. Mamata Banerjee must not be held responsible for the SSC mess.
Fact of the matter remains that the West Bengal government actively worked to cover up the scam and therefore all OMR sheets were destroyed. All relevant records were destroyed so that no one can figure out who the genuinely qualified candidates were and who got in through bribes.
Ms. Monideepa’s fangirling over Mamata Banerjee will not be anough to cover up the issue. The TMC administration is currently the most corrupt one in India. There is simply no doubt about this.