CBI summons Bengal’s Fire service minister

Three days after the Supreme Court rejected the West Bengal Government’s appeal against the Calcutta High Court’s order to bring in the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the Bengal municipal job scam case, the CBI has summoned Mamata Banerjee’s Fire Services Minister Sujit Bose in connection with the case.
He has been ordered to appear at the CBI’s Nizam Palace office on August 31 at 11 a.m. Bose, currently the Bengal Fire Service Minister, has been summoned based on certain documents recovered from the house of middleman Ayan Shil, who is already under arrest for his alleged role in selling jobs in multiple municipalities across the state. The CBI is probing multiple allegations of corruption in the state’s municipal bodies. Based on the leads gathered from documents recovered from Shil’s house, the CBI conducted searches in 14 municipalities. The role of Ayan Shil in facilitating irregular appointments in municipal bodies came to the surface when the central agencies were probing him and arrested him in connection with the teachers’ recruitment scam.
Before becoming a minister in the Mamata Banerjee cabinet, Sujit Bose was the Deputy Mayor of the South Dum Dum Municipality since 2016. When contacted, Sujit Bose denied receiving any summons from the CBI, claiming that he had learned about the summons from mediapersons. “I will definitely go once I receive the notice and if I am free on that date,” he said. The CBI is investigating municipal recruitment corruption on the orders of the Calcutta High Court bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay.
Incidentally, the Enforcement Director had arrested Ayan Shil in the recruitment case on March 19. The ED had claimed that OMR sheets (answer sheets) of job aspirants for various posts in several municipalities of the state had been found by searching Ayan’s office in Salt Lake. According to ED sources, Ayan Shil told the investigators during the interrogation that he took a total of Rs 200 crore in exchange for getting jobs in various municipalities. After this, the municipality’s appointment corruption came to light. Calcutta High Court Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay gave the CBI the charge of investigating the corruption. The state government approached the Supreme Court, challenging the order. But the apex court rejected the state’s plea. Justice Gangopadhyay’s order for the CBI investigation into municipal appointments was upheld.