School jobs case: Governor sanctions prosecution of Chandranath Sinha

Kolkata: Governor CV Ananda Bose on Friday sanctioned the prosecution of state Correctional Services minister Chandranath Sinha in connection with the school recruitment scam probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

“Based on documents placed before him, the Governor has approved sanctioning the prosecution of state minister Chandranath Sinha for the offence of money laundering in an ED case regarding the primary teachers’ recruitment scam,” a Raj Bhavan official reportedly stated.

“During the course of investigation under The Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002, it revealed that Partha Chatterjee, the then Education minister and others were involved in large scale public scam in which eligible and meritorious candidates were denied the opportunity of being appointed as school teachers and ineligible, below-ranked and even failed candidates were wrongly recommended and illegally-appointed as teachers in lieu of money,” the official reportedly added.

“During a search at the premises of one of the accused in January 2023, the ED had seized incriminating documents that identified agents who facilitated the recruitment of ineligible candidates. One of the documents specifically listed Chandranath Sinha, a sitting member of the Legislative Assembly and Minister in Govt of West Bengal who had referred several candidates.

Statements recorded revealed that payments were made to the agents, including Chandranath Sinha, for arranging these selections. During the course of a search at the residential premises of Chandranath Sinha, a substantial amount of unaccounted for cash totalling Rs 41 lakh was recovered,” the official is learnt to have stated. The Central probe agency had filed a chargesheet against Sinha on August 7. According to reports, the Central agency has reportedly found Rs 1.5 crore in two of Sinha’s bank accounts; however, the minister has failed to provide detailed information about these accounts.

Earlier, a chargesheet was filed against former Bengal Education minister Partha Chatterjee in the same scam case. Sinha’s name surfaced during the investigation of financial transactions linked to expelled TMC youth leader Kuntal Ghosh.Although summoned by the ED twice earlier, Sinha did not turn up for questioning. The minister, when contacted, reportedly said that he was unaware of any chargesheet being filed against him.