The Supreme Court on Monday refused to interfere with the Calcutta High Court order asking the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe into questionable recruitment of 1812 Group ‘C’ and Group “D’ employees in the civic bodies across the State, with the Directorate of Enforcement looking into money laundering dimension of the case.
A bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra refused to interfere with the probe by the CBI and the ED as Additional Solicitor General (ASG) SV Raju told the bench that both the teachers recruitment scam and the recruitment of employees in municipal bodies are interlinked.
ASG Raju told the bench that “incremating” material – both documentary and digital – surfaced during searches in the course of the investigation of teacher’s recruitment scam pointing to links between the two recruitment scams.
Appearing for the West Bengal government, senior advocate Kapil Sibal said that the High court entrusted investigation into alleged irregularities in the civic bodies recruitment relating to Group ‘C’ and Group ‘D’ staff without any material before it or any aggrieved person complaining about it.
Sibal said that the High Court could not have straight away handed over the investigation to the CBI , without State police looking into the matter and probing it.
“Enlarging the scope from teachers scam to municipality scam. How does it come to the court that it should go to the CBI ? By a single judge who does not have a roster to deal with it. No complaint, no FIR, no aggrieved person. Under which provision of the law ED files an application and seeks to investigate.”
Describing it as “targeting” and “roving inquiry,” Sibal said that ED has sought the details of the number of municipal bodies in the State, name, addresses, emails of the corte functionaries of these bodies. This is not the jurisdiction of the ED; it is (for probing) money laundering.
However, the bench was not persuaded and refused to interfere with the High Court order.
ASG Raju told the bench that “Rs 350 crores have exchanged hands in the appointment of undeserving candidates as teachers. The amount can go up. Including appointment of municipal employees … the appointment of undeserving teachers and municipal staff is an intermingled scam.”