School job scam: Former WBBSE chief gets bail in CID case, but to stay in jail

Kolkata, July 23 A single-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court, on Wednesday, granted bail to the former president of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE), Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay, in a case registered against him by the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for his involvement in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.

However, despite being granted bail in the CID case, he would not be able to be out of the bars right now, because of his continuing judicial custody in a parallel case filed against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Earlier this year, he was also granted bail in another case registered against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). However, even then, he was unable to get himself out of the bars for the same reason.

Altogether, three parallel cases have been filed against him in the alleged school-job scam, one each being registered by CBI, ED and CID.

Gangopadhyay had been accused of 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 this year, 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, 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 again and again, and he continued to occupy the chair of WBBSE president for 10 years at a stretch.

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