Frequent replacement of WBSSC officials was Partha Chatterjee’s key strategy in recruitment scam: CBI sources

Kolkata: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sources have revealed that frequent transfers and reshuffling of officials within the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) formed a key part of former State Education Minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee’s strategy to facilitate large-scale irregularities in teacher recruitment.

The WBSSC is tasked with recruiting teaching staff for secondary and higher secondary schools, as well as non-teaching staff in Group-C and Group-D categories across state-run schools. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court scrapped the WBSSC’s entire 2012 panel of 25,753 recruitments, citing widespread irregularities.

According to CBI findings, Chatterjee relied on a multi-layered system of manpower utilization to ensure the smooth execution of the irregularities while minimizing suspicion.

Investigators say Chatterjee first created a core team of loyal senior officials to oversee recruitment manipulations. The team allegedly included former West Bengal Board of Secondary Education president Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay, former WBSSC chairman Subiresh Bhattacharya, screening committee head S.P. Sinha, ex-WBSSC secretary Ashok Saha, and staff members Samarjit Acharya and Parna Basu. Charges have already been framed against many of them in connection with the scam.

At the operational level, junior officials tasked with data manipulation were frequently replaced. This deliberate rotation, sources say, ensured that no single official had comprehensive knowledge of the irregularities.

“Chatterjee was once considered a skilled human resources manager before entering politics. Ironically, he appears to have used that expertise to design an illegal system that prevented early detection of the scam,” said a CBI insider.

Partha Chatterjee has been in custody the longest among those charged in the WBSSC recruitment case. He was first arrested in July 2022 by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is conducting a parallel investigation. The CBI later took him into custody as well.

Though Chatterjee has recently secured bail in most cases filed by both the CBI and ED, he remains in judicial custody due to separate cases related to irregularities in the recruitment of primary teachers under the West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE).

IANS