No wrongdoing during my tenure as SSC chairman: NBU VC under CBI scanner

KOLKATA : North Bengal University Vice-Chancellor Subires Bhattacharyya on Thursday claimed no irregularities were committed during his tenure as chairman of the School Service Commission (SSC) between 2014 and 2018. Bhattacharyya’s comment comes a day after the CBI raided his office in Siliguri in connection with its probe into a school jobs scam, and sealed his apartment in the metropolis. Later on Thursday, sleuths of the central agency conducted a raid at the apartment in Bansdroni area of the city, and quizzed him over SSC recruitments during his tenure, a CBI official said.

"There was no wrongdoing during my tenure as chairman of the SSC. I can vouch for that. I am open to any probe or interrogation. “As a citizen of this country, I have full faith in the central investigating agencies and ready to extend all cooperation," Bhattacharyya said. Earlier in the day, he had said upon his arrival in Kolkata from Siliguri that the CBI should reveal what they came across during its raid at the V-C office in NBU on Wednesday.

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Bhattacharyya’s name figured in the report of a committee formed by the Calcutta High Court, which stated that illegal appointments were made, on recommendations of the SSC, in institutes run or aided by the West Bengal government in the past few years. The report submitted to the high court by the Justice (retd) R K Bag-headed committee said that a five-member panel formed in 2019 by the Education Department, when now-suspended Trinamool Congress leader Partha Chatterjee held the portfolio, for monitoring recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff, did not have any legal validity.

The CBI had on August 10 arrested former SSC adviser Shanti Prasad Sinha and its ex-secretary Ashok Kumar Saha, who were part of the panel. Chatterjee and his alleged close associate Arpita Mukherjee were earlier arrested by the Enforcement Department (ED), which is tracking the money trail in the scam.