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CBI summons West Bengal minister for questioning in civic body recruitment probe
The CBI summons came 72 hours after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition by the state government challenging a Calcutta high court order asking the CBI and the enforcement directorate (ED) to probe alleged irregularities
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday sent a summons to West Bengal fire services minister Sujit Bose, asking him to appear before its officials next week for questioning in the alleged municipalities recruitment scam, officials of the federal agency said.
Bose has been asked to reach the CBI office at Nizam Palace in south Kolkata at 11am on August 31, said officials.
Bose was the vice-chairman of South Dum Dum municipality in 2016 when the suspected scam in around 20 civic bodies across the state took place.
Responding, Bose said he did not receive the summon letter till Thursday afternoon but was ready to answer any question.
“I have not received the summon letter. But I will definitely be there unless an emergency situation arises. I am ready to answer any question,” the minister, said.
The CBI summons came 72 hours after the Supreme Court dismissed a petition by the state government challenging a Calcutta high court order asking the CBI and the enforcement directorate (ED) to probe alleged irregularities.
On Monday, a Supreme Court division bench headed by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud upheld the high court order.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for the Bengal government, had argued that the state police should be allowed to conduct the probe. He said a state ruled by a party opposed to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was being targeted.
The CBI and ED told both the Calcutta high court and the Supreme Court that there are common links between the civic body recruitment scam and the bribe-for-job scam in the West Bengal school education department in which several Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders, including former education minister Partha Chatterjee, have been arrested.
On April 21, justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta high court ordered the CBI probe during a hearing on the education department scam. A report placed before him by the ED, which is conducting a parallel probe, said documents recovered from the home of a suspect Ayan Sil indicated that a similar scam took place in numerous civic bodies as well.
Sil used to run a recruitment agency that was hired by several civic bodies, the ED told the court. He was arrested on March 19, 2023, in connection with the alleged recruitment scam.
The CBI probe into the school recruitment scam, too, was ordered by justice Gangopadhyay in May 2022.
On June 7, CBI teams conducted a raid on 16 civic bodies. Escorted by central paramilitary force personnel, around 100 CBI officials seized documents from multiple civic bodies in Nadia, Hooghly and North 24 Parganas districts and also the Salt Lake municipality on the eastern outskirts of Kolkata. A CBI team went to the office of the state municipal affairs department as well.
As the raids were on, chief minister Mamata Banerjee took a swipe at the Centre while distributing compensation money among families of those who died or got injured in the June 2 railway disaster in Odisha.
Banerjee said: “The biggest railway accident of this century has taken place but efforts are being made to suppress it. Why did the accident take place? How could so many people die? What will the CBI do? It can only probe a criminal case. Didn’t you see what happened at Pulwama (terror attack)?”
“Instead of probing the train accident, the CBI has been sent by Delhi to 16 civic bodies. These tactics cannot suppress the truth behind the railway disaster,” CM Banerjee said at the government event on June 7.
Meanehile, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) targeted the TMC after Bose was summoned.
“The TMC has no face to challenge the allegations of corruption in civic body recruitments after the Supreme Court order. Our party has nothing to do with CBI. All we want is the probe to end fast,” said Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.
