A staggering Rs 609.9 crore worth of properties have been attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment fraud, orchestrated under the watch of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) government.
Over 25,752 illegal appointments—including teaching and non-teaching posts—have been annulled by the Calcutta High Court in a scathing 280-page judgment, exposing a systemic loot of public trust, government jobs, and the futures of 26 lakh aspirants.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has so far attached properties worth Rs 609.9 crore in four related recruitment cases, including:
- Rs 56.5 crore attached recently in the SLST-2016 case
- Rs 163.7 crore in prior attachments in the same scam
- Rs 238.8 crore in the Assistant Teacher Recruitment Scam (Classes 9-12)
- Rs 151 crore in the Primary Teachers Recruitment Scam
In July 2022, the arrest of Partha Chatterjee, then Education Minister and senior TMC leader, and his aide Arpita Mukherjee, blew the lid off the scam. From Mukherjee’s flat, the ED recovered Rs 21 crore in cash and over Rs 1 crore in gold and jewelry.
Mamata Banerjee sold 26,000 jobs and destroyed the futures of 26 lakh students aspiring for various teaching and non-teaching positions.
In this connection, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached properties worth ₹56.5 crore.
Previously, the ED had attached properties… pic.twitter.com/JTB7T5am6X
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) April 23, 2025
Further investigation revealed that,
- A letter addressed to Mamata Banerjee, listing names of 44 aspirants who paid Rs 7 lakh each for recruitment
- A CD containing roll numbers of fraudulently selected candidates
One Niladri Das, a former Nysa employee and one of the scam’s chief executioners, was allegedly rewarded with additional government projects by the TMC-led administration even after the scam surfaced. Despite the Supreme Court upholding the High Court’s cancellation of over 26,000 appointments—labeling it as one of the most serious public sector frauds in recent history—Mamata Banerjee publicly denounced the verdict. On April 8, she vowed to reinstate the dismissed appointees, prompting a contempt notice for challenging judicial supremacy.
Her defiance was not limited to rhetoric. The West Bengal government attempted to legalize illegal appointments by requesting “supernumerary posts” to accommodate the fraudulently recruited candidates.
On April 22, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court, comprising Justices Debangsu Basak and Md Shabbar Rashidi, struck down the entire selection process for SLST-2016. The court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to complete a detailed probe and submit findings within three months. Additionally, it directed the State to conduct a fresh recruitment process within 15 days.
The judgment cited constitutional violations, gross negligence, and criminal conspiracy. The court described the recruitment scam as “a betrayal of public trust and a sabotage of fundamental rights to fair employment.”
A four-member committee led by retired Justice Ranjit Kumar Bag uncovered horrifying details:
- WBSSC appointed 2,355 more candidates than sanctioned vacancies.
- OMR sheets were tampered with and then destroyed in 2019.
- A total of 6,276 illegal appointments were confirmed—including 1,498 out-of-panel selections, 926 rank jumpers, and 4,091 candidates with mismatched OMR scores.
- WBSSC failed to retain scanned copies of OMRs while destroying physical evidence.
- Appointments continued beyond the expiry of the recruitment panel.
In 2016, the WBSSC conducted examinations to recruit Assistant Teachers for Classes 9 to 12 and non-teaching staff under Groups C and D in government-sponsored and aided schools. The aspirants sat for written tests and interviews, unaware that behind the scenes, jobs were being sold like commodities.
At the core of the fraud was the outsourcing of OMR sheet scanning to a private company—Nysa Communications. The WBSSC awarded this contract via a closed-door tender, completely sidestepping rules of transparency. Nysa, in turn, illegally subcontracted the work to ‘Data Scantech’, without obtaining any written approval.
Instead of assessing the sheets on-site, Nysa took the scanned OMR data on hard drives to their Noida office, raising serious concerns about tampering. When the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) examined the recovered hard drives in 2022, the truth was laid bare: scores were manipulated, ranks altered, and unqualified candidates were awarded teaching jobs.
The original OMR sheets were destroyed in 2019—a blatant and premeditated cover-up strategy. Despite RTI queries being filed by candidates between 2018–2023, WBSSC continued to provide scanned copies while maintaining in court that no such documents were preserved. This duality of lies forms the very anatomy of what can only be described as an administrative genocide of meritocracy.
