Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the high court on Monday asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to question the candidates whose purported OMR (optical mark recognition) sheet-photocopies were found in the house of Trinamul youth leader from Hooghly, Kuntal Ghosh.
Ghosh is now in the custody of the central agency. Appearing for the West Bengal Primary Education Board, a lawyer on Monday informed Justice Gangopadhyay that even after the board had taken all possible measures to make the latest recruitment process clean, some people were still allegedly engaged in malpractices.
The lawyer said the ED had seized photocopies of the OMR sheets of many candidates from the house of Ghosh, who was arrested recently in connection with alleged corruption in recruitment in government-aided schools.
OMR sheets are given to examinees to answer multiple-choice questions.
Justice Gangopadhyay observed that the contention made by the lawyer was right and some “unwise people” were still engaged in the recruitment racket.
The judge asked the ED to locate the candidates photocopies of whose OMR sheets were allegedly found in Ghosh’s house and question them.
Former education minister Partha Chatterjee and several former officials of the education department are in custody in connection with the alleged irregularities.
ED sources said some of the OMR sheets whose photocopies were found in Ghosh’shouse belonged to candidates who had appeared for the Teachers’ Eligibility Test in December last year.
Sources said that to maintain transparency in the last TET in December 2022, the primary education board had given the candidates photocopies of their respective OMRsheets to avoid confusion in future.
“A lot of documents were found in Ghosh’s house, including photocopies of some OMR sheets and Aadhaarcards of candidates who had appeared in the TET in December. It is yet to be ascertained how those documents reached there,” an ED official said.
The official said this could indicate that some of the people who were involved in the recruitment racket were still in business, even after the arrest of a number of suspects.
At the high court, JusticeGangopadhyay said investigators had found that an actress was involved in the school recruitment scam. He asked the ED to file a report naming the actress. “I want to see her. I want to see her films, too,” the judge said.
