Municipality recruitment case: WB govt approaches court opposing CBI probe

The West Bengal government on Tuesday approached a division bench of the Calcutta High Court challenging an earlier order for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe in the alleged multi-crore recruitment scam in different municipalities of the state.

The petition has been admitted and the matter is expected to come up for hearing at the division bench of Justices Arijit Banerjee and Apurba Sinha Roy this week.

The original order for the CBI probe was given by the court's single-judge bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay.

However, the state government approached the Supreme Court, which referred the matter back to the Calcutta High Court.

Thereafter, it approached the Calcutta High Court's single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha with the plea of quashing the order for the CBI probe in the matter.

However, Justice Sinha on May 12 upheld the order by the bench of Justice Gangopadhyay for the probe.

Now the state government has approached the division bench against Justice Sinha's latest verdict in the matter.

The state government's argument is that the original order by Justice Gangopadhyay was not proper as matters related to municipalities were not the subjects of his court.

It also argued that since law and order is a state subject, the West Bengal Police should have the authority to probe the matter.

The state government further argued that in this case that scope was not granted to the police.

However, the counter argument to this was that since recruitment scams in state-run schools and municipalities in West Bengal were related, the CBI probe in the matter is required.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had first unveiled the alleged municipalities recruitment scam while conducting raid and search operations at the residence of private real estate promoter Ayan Sil in connection with the agency's probe in the alleged recruitment scam in state-run schools.

--IANS

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