TMC leader Partha Chatterjee arrested by ED in connection with school recruitment scam

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Partha Chatterjee, West Bengal minister and the state secretary general of the ruling Trinamool Congress, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the alleged irregularities in recruitment of teachers and non-teaching staff in government schools, officials said on Saturday. He was questioned for around 26 hours before being arrested. He has been taken to the ED office in Kolkata and will be produced in court later in the day, said Anindya Raut, Chatterjee’s advocate.

On Friday, ED conducted raids in 13 places across West Bengal and seized cash worth ₹20 crore from a flat belonging to a close associate of Chatterjee.

Among the 13 locations where the federal agency conducted search operations were the houses of two West Bengal ministers, Partha Chatterjee and Paresh Adhikary, minister of state for education, they added. Chatterjee was the state education minister when the alleged scam took place.

“Cash worth more than ₹20 was seized from a flat which belongs to Arpita Mukherjee. It is being suspected that the cash was proceeds of the recruitment scam,” said an ED official late on Friday evening. On Friday, raids were carried out in the houses of some top former and present officials attached to the state education department whose names have cropped up in the alleged scam. The list included Manik Bhattacharya, TMC MLA and former president of the state board for primary education, Ratna Chakraborty Bagchi, the board’s secretary, SP Sinha, former advisor of the School Service Commission and Kalyanmoy Ganguly, president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, among others.

Earlier, the Calcutta high court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe into the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of hundreds of teachers and non-teaching staff in both secondary and primary schools of the state government.

Later in June, ED lodged two first information reports (FIRs) to unearth the money trail that was allegedly involved in the case. It is suspected that transactions worth crores of rupees were made for the appointment of teachers recruited through the SSC and Teacher Eligibility Test. Chatterjee, Adhikary and the officials have earlier been questioned by CBI. This is the first time Chatterjee is facing ED in connection with the case. The court earlier dismissed Adhikary’s daughter from the job of a school teacher.

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