MP Raju Bista joined fellow Members of Parliament from West Bengal to register our protest held in front of Mahatma Gandhi Murti in Parliamentary premise, against the complete collapse of the education system in the state. This sorry situation has been precipitated by the massive Teacher’s Recruitment Ghotala undertaken by TMC leaders, which is now being exposed layer by layer by the central agencies. According to him, Former West Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee has been arrested for Teacher’s Recruitment Ghotala with a cash of over 55 crores. MoS Education Paresh Adhikary’s daughter had to be removed from the post of teacher and asked to return her salary by the Calcutta High Court, after it was found that she had been recruited as teacher illegally. CBI has said that over 21000 teachers have been recruited illegally in West Bengal. Not only the teachers, but even group C and group D staff in the schools had been similarly recruited. Calcutta High Court has removed over 1900 Group D staff, 842 Group C staffs, 618 Secondary Level teachers.
TMC Ghotala is not confined to schools only, but in Colleges and Universities too TMC appointed underqualified faculty members. So much so, that the WB Govt subverted law to appoint politically connected individuals as Vice-Chancellors. Yesterday, Calcutta High Court has labelled those appointments too as illegal. Because of this, majority of the Universities in West Bengal are today running without legally appointed Vice-Chancellors.
In Darjeeling District, CBI has arrested Vice-Chancellor Subires Bhattacharyya who was appointed by WB Govt as VC of North Bengal University (NBU). Such is the condition in NBU today, that students living in the hostel have been told they won’t get food, as there is no one to sign the finance bill.
Instead of taking moral responsibility for these massive corruptions in the education sector, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said, “you can slap me, but don’t remove anyone from work.” It is evident that she is trying to shield those, who paid bribe to TMC leaders for their jobs.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is known to run the state with an iron feast. Thus, we are apprehensive that no Ministers or Bureaucrats would be indulging in ghotala, without blessings from the top office in the state. We are hopeful when the investigations are completed, the actual Kingpins who are sitting at top will be made answerable for their corruption and sent to jail.