Mamata Banerjee Can’t Dodge Blame Even For ‘Untainted’ Teachers Losing Their Jobs

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her party are to blame for Thursday’s (3 April) Supreme Court order sacking 25,752 teaching and non-teaching staff of government schools in the state.

The apex court upheld an earlier order of the Calcutta High Court ordering the termination of all the school staff who were appointed in 2016, holding that the entire selection process was “vitiated and tainted beyond resolution.”

“Manipulations and frauds on a large scale, coupled with attempted cover-up, have dented the selection process beyond repair and partial redemption. The credibility and legitimacy of the selection are denuded,” an apex court bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Sanjay Kumar observed in its 41-page order.

The Supreme Court order came on appeals filed by the Bengal government, the state School Service Commission (SSC), and 125 others who had been appointed by the SSC against the earlier Calcutta High Court order.

The Calcutta High Court in April last year scrapped the appointments of the 25,752 teaching and non-teaching staff by the SSC (in 2016) after gross irregularities in the selection process were proven.

That was after the then Justice Abhijit Ganguly, who was hearing the case, repeatedly offered lifelines to the SSC and the state government.

Justice Ganguly, who is now a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (MP), had asked the SSC to identify the candidates whose appointments were flawed and marked by gross irregularities. He had said only the candidates whose appointments were flawed would be sacked.

It is estimated that of the 25,752 teaching and non-teaching staff appointed to government-run schools in 2016, the selection process for about 5,500 was flawed and marked by gross irregularities.

The Calcutta High Court had asked the SSC to identify the tainted candidates so that the ones who were appointed on merit would not be affected. The SSC not only failed to abide by the High Court’s suggestion; it destroyed the records of the entire selection process of all candidates.

“The SSC played foul only to cover up its misdeeds. It is a well-known fact that undeserving candidates paid huge sums of money to Trinamool Congress leaders, including a few who are very close to Mamata Banerjee. So there was no way the SSC would have identified them. Had it done so, these candidates would have then demanded the Trinamool leaders they bribed to return the money,” BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari told Swarajya.

“That is why Mamata Banerjee, who knew everything, and it was on her orders the SSC indulged in all sorts of irregularities and corruption, is singularly responsible for the fate of the untainted candidates, who were appointed on merit,” Adhikari added.

The Supreme Court alluded to the role of the SSC and observed that the commission “did try to cover up its lapses and irregularities.”

“This cover-up has made the verification and ascertainment (of those who were appointed legally and fairly) more difficult or rather impossible, given the scale of camouflage and dressing up done at each stage. We are convinced that the entire selection process was intentionally compromised due to illegalities involved,” the SC observed.

Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), leader and former Lok Sabha MP Sujan Chakraborty said that the state government had a year’s time to identify people whose appointment process was irregular and fraudulent. “But the Mamata Banerjee government did not do so deliberately because it wanted to protect the candidates who had paid Trinamool leaders lots of money for their appointments," said Chakraborty.

"The government has sided with the unqualified, who got their jobs through bribery and, in the process, sacrificed the interests of the deserving candidates who got their jobs through fair means based on merit,” he added.

Hence, said former BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, the Chief Minister and her party are the only ones responsible for the sad plight of the 21,000-odd teachers and non-teaching staff who did not resort to foul means and bribery to get their jobs.

“Mamata Banerjee is shouting and protesting now and expressing solidarity with the sacked school staff. But she could have easily saved them had she asked the SSC to come clean and identify the tainted candidates. The untainted ones need not have lost their jobs,” said Ghosh.

The Supreme Court, in its order, upheld the Calcutta High Court’s observance of the illegalities committed by the SSC. These illegalities included destruction of scanned copies of the original OMR (optical mark recognition) sheets of all the candidates stored in its server.

The other illegalities committed by the SSC, as discovered by the Calcutta High Court, include appointing candidates far in excess of declared vacancies, appointing candidates who were not even in the panel (of successful candidates) or those who had submitted blank OMR sheets, biased appointments (persons ranked lower in the merit list being given preference over those ranked higher), and non-publication of the merit list.

Another illegality that directly implicates Banerjee was the cabinet decision to approve the creation of supernumerary posts to accommodate those individuals whose appointment process was marked by gross irregularities and illegalities.

“No matter how much Mamata Banerjee shouts and tries to blame others, it is she and she alone who is responsible for this,” said Adhikari.

“Even Mamata Banerjee cannot deny the fact that many of her party leaders are involved. Huge sums of money were recovered from former education minister Partha Chatterjee. A number of Trinamool leaders and functionaries, and persons with intimate links with the ruling party, were arrested,” Adhikari pointed out.

“The Chief Minister cannot say now that she knew nothing about the scam that went on under her nose and in which her close colleagues were complicit,” said BJP state president and junior Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar. “Everyone knows that she keeps a close track of everything that’s happening in the state and keeps tabs on everyone, including even senior ministers and functionaries of her party. So she had to know what was going on.”

More Trouble For Mamata Banerjee?

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is also probing the SSC scam and has unearthed evidence against Trinamool leaders, had paused the investigations since the Supreme Court was hearing the case.

Now, with the SC ruling against the appointments process and endorsing the illegality of the process, the ED will go ahead with its probe with renewed vigour.

A senior ED officer told Swarajya that the probe will now pick up pace, and summons will be issued to a number of people, including one person who is very close to Banerjee.

“We are in possession of clinching evidence against some people, including a senior Trinamool leader who is very close to the Chief Minister. We will summon and question all of them and take action,” the officer said.

The ED has tracked a company and gathered crucial evidence on how the company laundered the proceeds (bribes) of the SSC scam. Directors of this company are likely to be summoned for questioning.

Incidentally, the ED probe had focused on Abhishek Banerjee’s company — Leaps and Bounds Pvt Ltd — for its role in such money laundering. The company’s chief operating officer, Sujay Krishna Bhadra, had been arrested for his involvement in money laundering.

Bhadra, who is known in Trinamool circles as ‘Kalighater kaku’ (uncle from Kalighat, the area where Banerjee resides), is widely known to be close to the Banerjee family.

Apart from former education minister Partha Chatterjee and his close lady associate Arpita Mukherjee, Trinamool Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Manik Bhattacharya and a few other leaders and associates of the ruling party had been arrested for their involvement in the scam.

Incidentally, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) (which is also probing the cash-for-school-job scam) named Abhishek Banerjee in a chargesheet filed last month. The chargesheet referred to an audio recording of a meeting held between the scam’s alleged conspirators at Bhadra's residence.

In the recording, Bhardra is heard saying that Abhishek Banerjee had demanded Rs 15 crore as his share of the money collected from candidates appointed to school jobs. Abhishek Banerjee had been questioned by the ED and CBI.

If the ED intensifies its efforts and unearths more evidence against Trinamool leaders, including Abhishek Banerjee, it could spell big trouble for Mamata Banerjee.

According to CBI and ED officers associated with the probe, all those who had been appointed illegally had paid an average of Rs 6.5 lakh to Trinamool netas for their jobs. If 5,500 persons were appointed illegally, it means a whopping Rs 357.5 lakh was collected as bribes.