West Bengal teachers' recruitment scam: CBI probes Subiresh Bhattacharya's appointment as WBSSC chairman

Kolkata: The CBI, which is probing the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam, is now investigating a fresh angle on whether Subiresh Bhattacharya was appointed as the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) chairman to give the scam process a smooth flow.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday afternoon summoned two former chairmen of WBSSC, namely Chittaranjan Mondal and Pradeep Kumar Sur to the agency`s Nizam Palace office in central Kolkata.

CBI sources said that both Mondal and Sur were removed from the posts of the commission`s chairman one after another breaching all norms to accommodate Subiresh Bhattacharya in that chair.

"There are strong reasons that Bhattacharya`s appointment, breaching all norms, was done to facilitate a smooth flow of the scam process. The teachers` recruitment scam seems to have multiple dimensions where investigation in a particular line is leading to another line of corruption," said a CBI official.

On December 17 only, a special court of the CBI granted permission to the central probe agency to take fresh custody of Subiresh Bhattacharya from his judicial custody for five days.

On Saturday, the CBI counsel informed the court that Subiresh Bhattacharya played an important role in the recruitment of non-teaching staff for Group-C and Group-D, the recruitment exams for which was also conducted by the WBSSC. Recently, the CBI got access to 50 optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets of recruitment examinations for non-teaching staff which were tampered with to accommodate ineligible candidates depriving eligible ones.

Sources said that besides questioning the two former chairmen individually there are possibilities of placing Subiresh Bhattacharya face-to- face with Mondal and Sur and question the three together.

Subiresh Bhattacharya was holding the two parallel posts of WBSSC chairman and the vice- chancellor of the University of North Bengal while he was arrested by the CBI in September this year.

In fact, for quite some there were questions in the academic circles of the state on the reasons behind a single person holding two parallel posts at the same time.