The Enforcement Directorate (ED), in its charge-sheet filed before a court, has stated that primary school teachers' jobs in West Bengal were 'bought' by paying large sums of money.
After two months of rigorous investigation into the teacher recruitment scam, the ED stated that former education minister Partha Chatterjee and top officials of the school council were involved in the crime. “The primary teachers’ jobs have been purchased in lieu of a huge amount of money and extraneous considerations extended by the ineligible candidates to get appointments as Assistant Teachers in primary schools,” the ED stated.
The ED has revealed that the question papers for the Teachers' Eligibility Test and the evaluation process were “dubious”.
“Wrong questions and/answer keys were designed in disguised manner for depriving the eligible candidates. Some of them failed the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET, conducted by the primary school board) and or ineligible candidates got appointments. Some of them even did not give MCQ (Multiple Choice Questions) examination and gave blank exam papers only mentioning their personal details. They got appointments,” said ED charge-sheet, in the possession of THE WEEK.
The ED interrogated the bribe-givers under section 50 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) which is considered a quasi-magisterial statement.
One candidate Papiya Biswas, according to the ED, paid Rs 7.5 lakh to get the primary teacher's job which paid a salary Rs 16,500. Her husband Jayanta allegedly paid the money to an agent in North 24 Parganas named Chandana Mandol, who is known to be a Trinamool Congress member. Jayanta paid in cash and the money was withdrawn from two bank accounts in Kalyani in Nadia district.
The incident happened in 2015 when Partha was the education minister of the state. The current education minister, Bratya Basu, was also the education minister in the first Mamata Banerjee government. He then requested the chief minister to move him to some other department.
“The rate of primary teachers’ jobs was fixed at Rs 7.5 lakh per candidate in 2015. Then Chandana Mandol directed Jayanta’s wife to answer those questions which she knew perfectly and further directed his wife to submit paper sheet in respect of the remaining questions. The nefarious racket of selling jobs and its modus can be amply gauged from the statement of Jayanta Biswas,” wrote ED’s Assistant Director in the charge-sheet.
ED spoke to many other bribe givers who got jobs in a similar manner, by paying almost the same the amount—either in installments or in one shot.
Involvement of Partha Chatterjee
According to the ED, Partha is one of the kingpins. His department officials and the body which he considers an “autonomous organisation” have looted money. Information seized from Partha's mobile phone also revealed that he, along with former president of the primary school council, Manik Bhattacharya, amassed huge amounts of money.
The ED said that Partha and his aide Arpita Mukherjee floated 153 companies. Out of them, the ED said, “At least four companies were run by the former Bengal minister.”
In four companies, dummy directors were recruited at the direction of Partha. His late wife, daughter Sohini Chatterjee and son-in-law Kalyan Bhattacharjee were the owners.
According to the ED, Partha was difficult to crack and “he was evasive and non-cooperative” during interrogation. He denied most of the questions but when fresh allegations were brought by the ED, he remained clueless. He also denied his relationship with Manik and Arpita. He said that since he was a public servant, he knew a person from the film world like Aprita.
But Arpita in her statement given to the ED said, “I wanted to adopt a child and he approved that.” Said an ED official, “It spoke volumes about the relationship he had with Arpita.”
Around Rs 100 crore was recovered from Arpita’s flat, and gold and diamonds worth another Rs 100 crore were recovered from other houses of Arpita.
Manik, another kingpin, is being further investigated by the ED and CBI, and is yet to be arrested.
