School jobs scam: SC asks Kolkata court to expeditiously decide TMC leader Kuntal Ghosh's bail plea

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a special court in Kolkata to expeditiously decide a bail plea of TMC leader Kuntal Ghosh who was arrested in January last year in a money laundering case linked to alleged West Bengal school jobs-for-bribes scam.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) are probing the teacher recruitment scam over allegations that more than Rs 100 crore was raised by some of the accused leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) from aspiring teachers and non-teaching staff at state-run schools between 2014 and 2021.

Ghosh was arrested by the ED on January 21 last year. The case came into limelight after Ghosh alleged that the central probe agencies pressured him to name TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee.

A bench comprising Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan on Tuesday heard lawyer M S Khan, appearing for Ghosh, and asked the special court to decide the bail plea expeditiously.

The bench also issued a notice to the probe agency on Ghosh's plea and listed it for hearing on October 17.

The TMC leader has moved the top court alleging that now a new judge will hear his bail plea despite the fact that the predecessor judge had already heard his plea substantially.

Earlier, the top court had stayed the Calcutta High Court order annulling the appointment of nearly 24,000 people in teaching and non-teaching jobs in the government schools of the state.

The recruitment process was conducted by the West Bengal School Service Commission in 2016 and over 23 lakh candidates appeared at the exam.

It was alleged that most of the candidates were given jobs after wrongly evaluating the OMR sheets.

Several persons including Ghosh are in custody in the case.