Calcutta, Dec. 3: The government today suspended three PWD engineers in connection with the Assembly microphone snag in an apparent bid to counter allegations of having slipped into inertia.

“They were directly responsible for the operation and maintenance of the sound system in the Assembly. A (four-member) inquiry committee has been formed and told to complete its probe in 15 days,” PWD minister Kshiti Goswami said after issuing the suspension orders.

The House had to be adjourned for nine days on December 1 after the Speaker realised that many of the mikes were not working. The PWD secretary admitted yesterday that not a single check had been run between the installation of the Rs 1.64-crore sound system and the Speaker’s enquiry on the eve of the winter session about whether it was working.

The snag embarrassed the government, and the Opposition accused it of “incompetence”.

The suspended officials are executive engineer Niranjan Das, assistant engineer Debashis Pal and sub-assistant engineer Krishnapada Ghosh. “They will be under suspension as there’s always a chance of them influencing or tampering with evidence,” the minister said.

The country head of Bosch, the company that had installed the new acoustic system, has arrived from Bangalore to look into the snag. The country head and the company’s Singapore-based CEO will be asked to depose before the probe panel, Goswami added.

PWD engineer-in-chief Swapan Kumar Das heads the committee, which includes an electrical engineer, a West Bengal Civil Service official and an information technology expert attached to a central government undertaking. Among other things, they will look into:

How the tender had been floated and its specifications

Whether the agency picked met the requirements and whether those requirements were complied with

The job done by the company and those assigned by the government to oversee it

Speaker Hashim Abdul Halim has convened an all-party meeting on December 8 to discuss whether the House can re-commence on Dec- ember 10.