A young man who came to appear for an interview for the selection of primary teachers by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, was arrested for carrying an allegedly fake admit card, police said.
Another man, who, the accused introduced as his “uncle” and was waiting outside the Board’s office was also arrested.
Bidhannagar police commissioner Gaurav Sharma said officers of Bidhannagar (North) police station have arrested two persons named Pritam Ghosh and Bishnu Mahato. They were handed over to the police by the West Bengal Board of Primary Education for alleged cheating, he said.
“They were handed over by the Board with a formal complaint that Pritam Ghosh, who had come to appear for the interview, was a fake candidate. Another person named Bishnu Mahato has been arrested as the abator. A detailed investigation has been started,” Sharma said.
Both the accused are from the Gangarampur area of the South Dinajpur district.
Ghosh was caught while entering the premises of the Board office in Salt Lake as the admit card he was carrying allegedly bore a registration number that matched with another candidate.
“First, his name was not there in the list and secondly, the registration number mentioned in his admit card was identical to another candidate whose name was there in the list of candidates to be interviewed,” said an official of the Board.
Partha Karmakar, deputy secretary of the West Bengal Primary Education Board said the Board officials caught a fake candidate during the interview.
“He was handed over to the police,” Karmakar told The Telegraph. The Board, which had been in the news for alleged irregular recruitment of primary school teachers, has started conducting fresh rounds of interviews for the recruitment of primary school teachers.
On Saturday, the interview was scheduled at the Board’s Salt Lake office.
October last year, a former president of the West Bengal Primary Education Board and now a Trinamul Congress MLA from Nadia district, Manik Bhattacharya, had been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with alleged irregularities in teacher recruitment in government-aided schools in Bengal.
Allegations had surfaced against Bhattacharya that he had appointed teachers in lieu of money.
Following Bhattacharya’s arrest the Calcutta high court ordered 269 teachers, who were appointed through the Teachers’ Eligibility Test held in 2017 when Bhattacharya was the president of the board, not to attend school and asked them to refund the amount they had received as salary since their appointment.
