HC upholds central agencies' investigation into municipal appointment rigging, setback for Mamata government

A bench of Justices Tapovrata Chakraborty and Parthasarathy Chatterjee of the Kolkata High Court on Thursday directed that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigate the recruitment rigging in various municipalities of West Bengal.

Earlier on April 21, a single bench of Justice Abhijit Ganguly of the High Court had directed the CBI to investigate corruption in the municipal appointment case. The order was also upheld by a single bench of Justice Amrita Sinha.

The state government appealed against this in a double bench. Actually, documents related to appointments in municipalities were recovered from the house of Ayan Sheel, a Trinamool leader and promoter of Hooghly district, who was arrested in the case of teacher appointment corruption. Recently CBI and ED have conducted raids in many municipalities of the state and recovered important documents.

Sources in the central agency have said that the case of municipal appointment corruption is worth more than 200 crores. Along with teachers, a large amount of money has been collected for appointment in municipalities as well.

In this regard, the state government had asked the court to conduct a parallel investigation, but the court dismissed the government's plea and made it clear that the investigation by the central agencies will continue in this case. Court will not interfere in it.