KOLKATA: West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose has sanctioned prosecution against former state minister Partha Chatterjee in the multi-crore teacher recruitment scam.
Sources from Raj Bhawan stated, “The Governor has zero tolerance for corruption. The prosecution (for Chatterjee) has been sanctioned.”
Chatterjee, who is considered close to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, is under judicial custody. The case is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The New Indian has learned that Chatterjee has challenged the move. The legal team, handling the case on behalf of Chatterjee, said that it is not the Governor but the assembly speaker who can permit such sanctions.
The New Indian spoke to legal experts and opined that since Chatterjee was holding a ministerial post when arrested, according to the procedure, the Governor’s nod was required to frame charges against him and initiate a trial. Chatterjee was then the minister of industries.
Chatterjee was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on July 23 in the SSC recruitment scam. His arrest followed the recovery of a huge amount of money from the residence of his close aide, Arpita Mukherjee.
Chatterjee’s arrest led to massive protests by the lakhs of job aspirants who took to the roads, demanding justice.
While the dust of the SSC scam is yet to settle, the ED arrested another key leader, Anubrata Mondal, in a cross-border cattle smuggling scam.
In 2021, the then state Governor Jagdeep Dhankar gave permission to sanction the prosecution of Trinamool Congress (TMC) ministers Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee in the Narada Scam case.