Ex-WBBSE chief gets bail in Bengal cash-for-job case

Kolkata, June 24 Former president of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay, on Tuesday, was granted bail by a single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court in the cash-for-school job case registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

However, despite being granted bail by the single-judge bench of Justice Suvra Ghosh, Gangopadhay would not be able to come out of jail now. This is because he is also serving judicial custody in a separate case registered against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel probe in the school-job case.

Gangopadhyay was accused of the recruitment irregularities for both teaching staff in secondary and higher secondary standards, as well as non-teaching staff in the Group-C and Group-D categories. The main charge against him is that he was an active participant in the entire chain of irregularities where ineligible candidates got teaching and non-teaching jobs paying hefty amounts.

In April, a division bench of the Supreme Court cancelled 25,753 teaching and non-teaching jobs recruited in the 2016 panel of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC). At that point in time, Gangopadhyay was in charge of WBBSE.

Besides being the WBBSE chairman, he was also a member of the advisory board for school education that was constituted by then state education minister and the former secretary general of Trinamool Congress Partha Chatterjee, who is also languishing behind bars after being identified both by CBI and ED as the principal mastermind in the school-job case.

Gangopadhyay is accused of distributing appointment letters to ineligible candidates, flouting all norms and without cross-checking the recommendations of WBSSC’s screening committee. The investigative sleuths were surprised by how his terms were extended, and he continued to occupy the chair of WBBSE president for 10 years at a stretch.

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