Bengal municipality job case: ED sends queries to 2 govt departments

In the charge sheet, the ED has claimed that while Sil collected Rs 45 crore from candidates in the case of school recruitment, he collected around Rs 35 crore for municipalities' recruitment.

Kolkata (West Bengal): As part of its ongoing probe in the multicrore municipalities recruitment case in West Bengal, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has forwarded a set of queries to two state government departments seeking details of recruitments made in different municipalities during the last few years.

The two departments are -- the state municipal affairs & urban development department and the West Bengal Municipal Service Commission. Sources said that besides details of the recruitments in these municipalities for the last few years, the ED has sought explanatory notes from these two departments on the detailed process of recruitment.

Details have also been sought about the outsourced agencies that were hired by the different municipalities during this period. Earlier this month, ED started its formal investigation by filing an enforcement case information report against private real estate promoter Ayan Sil. In fact, the municipalities recruitment case surfaced after the ED sleuths recovered incriminating documents on this count while conducting raid and search operations at Sil's residence in connection with the central agency's probe on the school recruitment case in West Bengal.

Prior to that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) too filed an FIR and started its own parallel investigation in the matter. In the latest supplementary charge sheet filed by the ED at a special PMLA court in Kolkata, the central agency has given details of the collections by Sil in cases of alleged irregularities in both school recruitments and municipality recruitments.

In the charge sheet, the ED has claimed that while Sil collected Rs 45 crore from candidates in the case of school recruitment, he collected around Rs 35 crore for municipalities' recruitment. The state government had approached the Calcutta High Court opposing the central agency investigation in the municipalities' recruitment case.

But first, the single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha and then the division bench of Justice Biswajit Basu and Justice Apurba Sinha Roy rejected the state government's plea and refused to stay the central agency probe in the matter. (IANS)