School jobs for cash scam: Supreme Court grants bail to Kuntal Ghosh

The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to Trinamool Congress (TMC) youth wing leader Kuntal Ghosh in the case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the alleged school jobs-for-cash scam in West Bengal [Kuntal Ghosh v [Kuntal Ghosh v. Central Bureau of Investigation]..A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan pronounced the bail order today, subject to various conditions including that Ghosh cannot hold any public office or speak on the merits of the allegations against him while out on bail..The Court added that bail would be subject to other conditions set by the trial court, including the surrender of Ghosh's passport and other conditions imposed by the Calcutta High Court while granting him bail in the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) case in the same matter.Ghosh was also ordered not to leave West Bengal without prior permission of the investigating agency or the trial court as a condition for bail.Further, Ghosh was ordered to not misuse his liberty by influencing witnesses or tampering with evidence and to provide his mobile number to the trial court and IO.Ghosh must also co-operate with probe and trial, the Court added..The West Bengal job recruitment scam in which Ghosh is an accused involves allegations that illegal recruitments were made to primary and secondary schools across the State during the recruitment process of 2016.Several persons, including the former State Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and TMC party MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jiban Krishna Saha, are behind bars for their alleged involvement in the matter, along with suspended TMC leaders like Santanu Kundu.In January last year, Ghosh was arrested by the ED in the case. The Calcutta High Court granted him bail in the ED case on November 21. Ghosh's bail plea in the CBI case was filed through Advocate Shilpa Singh and drawn by Advocates Balwant Singh Billowria and MS Khan..On a related note, the Calcutta High Court had earlier cancelled close to 24,000 jobs provided under the 2016 recruitment process by the West Bengal School Service Commission. Over 23 lakh candidates had appeared in the examinations for the 24,000 job vacancies in 2016. It had been alleged before the High Court that most candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating OMR sheets.In May this year, the Supreme Court stayed the Calcutta High Court's decision to cancel these recruitments. The matter is still pending before the top court.