WB teacher recruitment: SC dismisses MLA Manik Bhattacharya's plea against arrest

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a plea by TMC MLA Manik Bhattacharya against his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with alleged irregularities in primary teacher recruitment in West Bengal.

The central investigating agency on August 10 arrested former SSC adviser Dr Shanti Prasad Sinha and its ex-secretary Ashok Kumar Saha, who were part of a committee formed by the Calcutta High Court. The report submitted to the high court by Justice R K Bag-headed committee said panel when the senior Trinamool Congress leader Partha Chatterjee held the portfolio, the recruitment monitoring of teaching and non-teaching staff did not have any legal validity.

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Thereafter, education minister Chatterjee and his alleged close associate Arpita Mukherjee were also arrested by the Enforcement Department (ED) who were tracking the money trail in the scam in the School Service Commission recruitment scam. The CBI arrested North Bengal University vice-chancellor Subires Bhattacharyya in connection with its probe into the assistant teachers’ recruitment irregularities in 2016.

It is alleged that several people who did poorly in the recruitment examinations were hired as teachers in exchange for lakhs of rupees, while the eligible candidates were severely overlooked.

A bench of justices Aniruddha Bose and Vikram Nath refused to interfere with the ED arrest and junked the plea filed by Bhattacharya. "The application is dismissed," the bench said. The ED had arrested Bhattacharya on October 11 after night-long questioning in connection with the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of primary teachers.

Bhattacharya, the former chairman of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, was arrested for allegedly not cooperating with the investigation. He is the MLA from the Palashipara assembly constituency in Nadia district.