In a setback for the West Bengal government, the Calcutta High Court on Thursday refused to grant an interim stay on a Single-judge Bench order for a CBI enquiry in the alleged primary teachers’ recruitment scam.

On 13 June, Single Bench of Justice Avijit Gangopadhyay ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the recruitment of primary teachers by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) in 2014 and also ordered immediate cancellation of the appointment of 269 candidates for the post.

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On 16 June, the WBPEE moved the Division Bench of Justice Subrata Talukdar and Justice Lapita Banerjee seeking an interim stay on the CBI probe in the matter.

The first hearing in the matter took place on Thursday. But the Division Bench refused to give an interim stay on the ongoing CBI enquiry in the matter.

The next hearing will be on 30 June, when all the parties in the case will have to submit their arguments in the form of affidavits.

On Thursday, the division bench raised the same question as to why extra marks were credited only to select candidates, whose appointments were cancelled earlier by the Single-judge Bench of Justice Gangopadhyay. It observed that if there was any mistake in the question paper, then additional marks would have been allotted, without bias, to all candidates.

Justice Gangopadhyay has ordered the removal of WBBPE president, Dr Manik Bhattacharya, also a Trinamul MLA, and the WBBPE has challenged that order as well.

Bengal secondary exam board chief removed

West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) president Dr Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay, whose name has figured in the recent West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment scam, was removed from his post on Thursday.

Instead of extending the terms of Gangopadhyay, the state government replaced him with Dr Ramanuj Ganguly, a professor with Barasat State University in North 24-Parganas.

Gangopadhyay, as the WBBSE chairman, was a member of the advisory committee of WBSSC, which is perceived to have played a key role in the recruitment scam. He is among the five persons against whom the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team, investigating the scam, had filed FIRs.

He was also questioned by the CBI in this matter. On 16 June, a six-member CBI team went to Gangopadhyay’s residence and questioned him on the recruitment irregularities. CBI sources said that the agency wanted to know if Gangopadhyay was aware of any politically influential person influencing the recruitment process in the WBSSC.

Later, the CBI team took Gangopadhyay to the WBBSE office in Salt Lake and conducted another round of inquiry there.

The CBI sleuths then conducted a search at the WBBSE office and seized a number of documents and hard disks. They also questioned the staff and officials present at the WBBSE office.