The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed its first FIR in the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment case, stating that applications filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act were used to increase the marks of unsuccessful candidates so that their recruitment as group C staff in state-run schools could be justified.
“The marks of unsuccessful candidates were increased based upon their application under RTI Act, by way of re-evaluation of their OMR sheets,” the CBI stated.
The FIR comes after the Calcutta high court earlier this week asked the central agency to probe into the alleged irregularities in the state School Service Commission.
The agency has already quizzed former education minister and senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Partha Chatterjee on Wednesday.
Chatterjee, an incumbent cabinet minister, has been called for a second round of questioning next week. Meanwhile, the Calcutta high court has ordered that Chatterjee be made a respondent in the ongoing case. The court has also directed him to submit details of his assets.
In the FIR, the federal agency has named five members of a panel set up after Chatterjee that allowed revaluation based on RTI applications. The names include SP Sinha, panel convenor and advisor to the SSC, Saumitra Sarkar, chairman of the panel and Kalyanmoy Ganguly, president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, among others. Chatterjee has not been named.
“The constitution of this committee (five-member panel) was a violation of the School Service Commission Act, 1997,” said the FIR.
{{/usCountry}}“The constitution of this committee (five-member panel) was a violation of the School Service Commission Act, 1997,” said the FIR.
{{/usCountry}}They have been charged with sections 120b (criminal conspiracy), 417 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the India Penal Code and other sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Even though Chatterjee faced the CBI for the first time on Wednesday, the agency has already questioned Sinha, Sarkar and other members of the panel multiple times regarding the case.
A senior CBI officer said that fabricated note sheets were issued on the instructions of Sinha and Sarkar, among others, to increase the marks and upgrade ranks against the RTI applications.
The CBI FIR also stated that the accused persons prepared fictitious memos of regional commissions by using scanned signatures of the chairpersons of those regional commissions without their knowledge.
“Based on those recommendations, appointment letters were issued bypassing the normal chain of hierarchy and without sending those recommendation letters to the appointment section of board of secondary education and without notifying the names of the candidates in the website of CentraI Commission for verification of testimonials and collection of appointment letters on the notified date. Thus, the deserving genuine candidates were debarred from getting the said regular salaried jobs even after expiry of the panel,” said the FIR.