OMR sheets in teachers’ exams destroyed on Manik Bhattacharya’s order: WBBPE tells HC

Kolkata: The Optical Marks Recognition (OMR) sheets used in the 2017 examination for recruitment of teachers in West Bengal government-run schools were destroyed on instructions of Trinamool Congress legislator and former Chairman of West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE), the Board’s counsel informed the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday.

As the matter came up for hearing at the single- judge Bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha on Tuesday, the WBBPE’s counsel said the decision to destroy the OMR sheets was taken independently by Manik Bhattacharya without any resolution adopted by other members of the Board in the matter.

Manik Bhattacharya is currently in judicial custody for his alleged involvement in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case.

The WBBPE’s counsel informed the court that Manik Bhattacharya, while taking the decision to destroy the OMR sheets, did not consult the other Board members.

To recall, the Board has already informed the court that although the OMR sheets were destroyed, S Basu & Company, the outsourced agency of WBBPE for supply of OMR sheets, was asked to preserve their digitised copies in their servers.

Recently, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) informed Justice Mantha’s Bench that even those digitised copies of the OMR sheets are untraceable.

Thereafter, Justice Mantha directed the CBI to take the help of cyber and software experts to recover those digitised copies from the server.

On Tuesday afternoon, CBI officials accompanied by two cyber and software experts, conducted search operations at the office of the outsourced agency.

As per the order of Justice Mantha, the entire cost of hiring the experts by the CBI in the matter will be borne by WBBPE.