Bengal's new BJP govt sanctions three cases including teacher recruitment scam for CBI

Days after being sworn in as Chief Minister, Suvendu Adhikari said on Wednesday that the new BJP government has cleared three major cases for investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation, alleging that the probes had remained stalled during the tenure of the TMC-led Mamata Banerjee administration.

The first BJP CM of the state informed that sanction had now been granted in connection with the teachers’ recruitment scam, the municipality recruitment scam and the cooperative bank scam - cases that have triggered prolonged political controversies and allegations of large-scale corruption in West Bengal over the past few years.

“We have sanctioned three cases for the CBI that was held up by previous Chief Minister,” Adhikari said.


The most prominent of these involves the teachers' recruitment scam, a sprawling investigation into the alleged sale of thousands of teaching and non-teaching positions within the state-run school system.

Spanning the years 2014 to 2021, the scandal allegedly saw a sophisticated "merit-for-cash" system where qualified candidates were systematically sidelined in favor of those willing to pay bribes.

However, this culture of manipulated hiring allegedly extended into the state’s urban administration through the municipality recruitment scam.

Initially discovered as an offshoot of the education probe, this case involves a similar pattern of corruption across over urban local bodies, where hiring processes for sweepers, clerks, and drivers were reportedly outsourced to private agencies.