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Ex-Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee granted bail in teachers recruitment scam case
The court has directed that Partha Chatterjee will not be appointed to any public office while his trial is on.
The Calcutta high court granted bail to former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee on Friday in teachers recruitment scam case.
The bail was granted by a single-judge bench of Justice Suvra Ghosh. However, the court has asked Chatterjee to surrender his passport and not leave the jurisdiction of the trial court while on bail.
The court also said that Chatterjee will not be appointed to any public office while his trial is on.
Chatterjee was accused of being involved in illegal recruitment of unmerited candidates on several teaching and non-teaching posts in the education department in West Bengal when he was the education minister.
The investigation into the case started in May 2022 when the Calcutta high court ordered Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the irregularities in such appointments through SSC and WBBSE exams between 2014 and 2021.
Chaterjee has been a member of West Bengal's legislative assembly since 2001 and a minister in the state from 2011 to 2022. He held the education portfolio since 2016.
The bail comes two weeks after the CBI filed final charges against Partha Chatterjee, ex-West Bengal minister Paresh Adhikari and his daughter, along with 18 others in the bribery-for-job case at Kolkata’s Alipore court.
It was alleged that some people who got appointed on teaching and non-teaching positions had paid bribes in the range of ₹5-15 lakh to get the jobs even though they had failed the selection tests.
The appointments of all 25,752 teachers and non-teaching staff from the 2016 recruitment panel were cancelled by the bench of the Chief Justice of India on April 3 this year.
On Thursday, September 25, some school job aspirants staged a protest in Kolkata's Salt Lake to demand fair recruiment in state government-run schools. The aspirants had recently appeared for the State Level Selection Test (SLST) conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission on September 7 and 14.
