The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday conducted search operations at six locations in Kolkata, including a property belonging to West Bengal minister Sujit Bose, in connection with its probe into the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of a civic organisation, a senior official said.
The ED teams raided the minister's residence-cum-office in Salt Lake, and the houses of former officials of the Dum Dum Municipality, he said.
"Today's raids are aimed at collecting documents linked to corruption. The office of the minister was not originally on our list," the ED official told PTI.
The central agency had earlier conducted a raid at Bose's residence and questioned him for over 12 hours in connection with the same case in January 2024.
The Bengal minister was earlier the vice-chairman of South Dum Dum Municipality from 2010 to 2021, when around 250 people were recruited to the civic body allegedly in an unscrupulous manner.
The CBI and ED had earlier informed the Calcutta high court about a link between the cases related to the civic body recruitment scam and the West Bengal school recruitment scam.
In April 2023, the Calcutta High Court had directed the CBI to probe the irregularities in the recruitment of municipalities.
Both probe agencies - the ED and the CBI are looking at the irregularities in the recruitments made by the civic bodies.
On June 7, the CBI raided 16 locations and seized documents from multiple civic bodies in Nadia, Hooghly and North 24 Parganas districts and also the Salt Lake municipality.
Later, in August 2023, the Supreme Court had dismissed a petition by the West Bengal government challenging the CBI probe into the case.
On January 5, 2024 three Enforcement Department (ED) officers were assaulted and their vehicles damaged allegedly by supporters of TMC leader Shahjahan Sheikh when they tried to raid his residence at Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district in connection with their probe into the ration distribution scam.
The TMC denounced the coordinated searches at the homes of several party leaders, for their alleged involvement in irregularities in municipal recruitment in West Bengal, characterising it as "vendetta politics and a desperate manoeuvre" by the BJP to create a narrative ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.