Bengal school job case: SC issues notice to ED on Partha Chatterjee’s bail plea

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on a plea filed by former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee seeking bail in connection with the alleged cash-for-school job scam.

Issuing notice, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan asked the federal anti-money laundering agency to file its reply within two weeks.

As per the computerised case status, the apex court is likely to hear the matter next on October 17.

In April this year, the Calcutta High Court rejected Chatterjee’s bail plea. After being denied bail in the lower court multiple times, Chatterjee approached the Calcutta High Court.

Chatterjee contended that he had no connection with the huge amount of cash recovered from the residence of his close aide Arpita Mukherjee, and should be granted bail.

The ED had recovered huge quantities of cash and gold from the twin residences of Mukherjee in July 2022, which the latter had claimed were kept there by former Education Minister Chatterjee.

In the course of the investigation, the ED also confiscated some property forms of land plots or residential houses indirectly or jointly held by the Trinamool Congress leader and his close associates and relatives.

Chatterjee was arrested from his residence by the ED in July 2022. Since then, after the initial days of central agency custody, his address had been a cell at Presidency Central Correctional Home in south Kolkata.

Recently, the Calcutta High Court granted bail to Trinamool Congress legislator and the former president of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education Manik Bhattacharya in connection with the cash-for-school job case in state-run schools.

Bhattacharya was the second heavyweight leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress, after the former State Education Minister and party secretary general Partha Chatterjee, to be arrested in the school job case.