CBI secures Bengal Guv's nod to include Partha Chatterjee’s name in charge sheet

Kolkata: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) informed a court here on Thursday that it has secured permission from the office of West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose to include the name of former state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee in its charge sheet in the alleged multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam in state-run schools.

The CBI officials clarified that after including the name of Chatterjee in the charge sheet, a permission for the same was sought from the Governor’s office as part of a protocol where Raj Bhavan’s assent in necessary for including the name of a state minister in a charge sheet.

The Governor administers the oath of office to a state minister and hence Raj Bhavan’s assent in such cases is necessary.

Although Chatterjee’s name was included in the charge sheet, the central agency was till date unable to submit the same to the court officially with the Governor’s assent on it.

However, the decks have been cleared now as the assent from the Governor’s office has come, CBI claimed.

Chatterjee was arrested in July last year by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is conducting a parallel probe into the school jobs case.

Later, after obtaining permission from the court, the CBI took him into custody for separate interrogation.

Currently, he is lodged at the Presidency jail in Kolkata.

Besides Chatterjee, five other persons, including former top officials of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education and the West Bengal School Service Commission, along with Chatterjee’s confidant Arpita Mukherjee, have been named in the charge sheet.