The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Prof Subiresh Bhattacharya in connection with the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment scam. Dr Bhattacharya was a former lecturer of Physiology in the Maharaja Bir Bikram College of Agartala. Presently he was vice-chancellor of the University of North Bengal and was suspected to have been associated with the multi crore WBSSC financial irregularities.
This is for the first time in the country that a Vice Chancellor of a state university was arrested in financial irregularities scam.
The CBI officials arrested Dr Bhattacharya on Monday afternoon.
Earlier, on August 24, the CBI conducted raid in his Kolkata and Siliguri residences. Then Dr Bhattacharya maintained that while there might have been some technical mistakes in the appointment process during his tenure as the WBSSC chairman, there had been no corruption in the process.
Now, after arrest Dr Bhattacharya would be presented at the special court of CBI on Tuesday where the counsel of the central agency would seek his custody for interrogation.
Known to be close associate of arrested former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee Bhattacharya had bee the chairman of WBSSC from 2014 to 2018. Partha Chatterjee was the then state education minister. It was during this period that the teachers’ recruitment scam allegedly took place.
Bhattacharya , originally a resident of Agartala had left MBB College decades ago and went to West Bengal where he taught in various colleges. Later he becae close to Partha Chatterjee and other Trinamool Congress leaders and was given some important positions including that of WBSSC chairman and then North Bengal University Vice Chancellor.
Dr Bhattacharya’s arrest happemed to be ninth arrest in connection with the WBSSC scam – the others being former state education minister, Partha Chatterjee, his confidante Arpita Mukherjee, former WBBSE president, Kalyanmoy Gangopadhayay, former WBSSC secretary, Ashok Saha, former convenor of the commission’s screening committee, SP Sinha and three middlemen- Pradeep Singh, Prasanna Roy and Subrata Malakar.
