The CBI on Thursday questioned Bengal education secretary Manish Jain for over eight hours in connection with the probe into alleged irregularities in recruitment to state-aided schools
Responding to a summons, Jain went to the Nizam Palace office of the CBI a little after 10am.
“The CBI wanted to find out how the education department functions, what are the rules and regulations and how they are followed,” Jain told reporters after stepping out around 6.40pm.
This was the second time that Jain faced CBI officers. He had earlier been questioned in July 2022.
CBI officers said Thursday’s questioning was aimed at finding out how the advisory committee to the school service commission was set up and whether Jain was aware of its formation and who its members were.
The central agency had earlier said the senior bureaucrat had sent a file to the commission on the formation of the advisory committee, whose chairman was Shanti Prasad Sinha.
Sinha, among the accused in the SSC case, is now in jail.
Calcutta High Court has called the committee illegal.
Jain said the recruitments were carried out by an independent agency and the state government had no role in it.
On Thursday, Jain was asked to appear with files and documents relating to the selection process. Officers said they wanted to know whether he had knowledge about the purpose for which the expert committee was formed when he forwarded it to the then education minister.
In March, the CBI had arrested Niladri Das, former vice-president of a Noida-based company that was allegedly responsible for assessing scanned OMR sheets of SSC recruitment exams.
CBI officers said Jain’s name surfaced when they were questioning Sinha and Partha Chatterjee, former education minister.
The advisory committee remains central in the investigation, the officers said, adding that Chatterjee had initially denied being aware of any such committee till he was shown a file bearing his signature.
