Baby Chakraborty, KalimNews, June 24, 2025, Kolkata : Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay, the former President of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE), was granted bail on Tuesday by Justice Suvra Ghosh of the Calcutta High Court in the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) cash-for-jobs case linked to the massive school recruitment scam. However, his release from custody will not follow, as he remains behind bars due to ongoing judicial custody in a separate case lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel probe into the same scam.
Gangopadhyay has been accused of playing a central role in large-scale recruitment irregularities that plagued appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff across secondary and higher secondary schools in the state. The charges against him include knowingly approving and distributing appointment letters to ineligible candidates for both Group C and Group D posts, allegedly in exchange for significant sums of money. These appointments were made bypassing established norms and without due verification by the screening committees of the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC).
His prolonged tenure as WBBSE president—extending over a decade—has also come under scrutiny, with investigators raising questions about repeated extensions despite mounting complaints and irregularities. In a related development, the Supreme Court in April had annulled 25,753 teaching and non-teaching posts filled from the controversial 2016 WBSSC panel, a time when Gangopadhyay was actively holding office.
Apart from his role in WBBSE, Gangopadhyay also served on the advisory board for school education, formed by then Education Minister and former Trinamool Congress secretary-general Partha Chatterjee. Chatterjee too is currently in judicial custody, identified as a key figure in the alleged recruitment scam by both the CBI and the ED.
Despite receiving bail in multiple cases earlier—including one involving recruitment of Group C staff—Gangopadhyay has not secured release. On previous occasions, he was re-arrested within hours of being granted bail, including by the CBI in a case involving recruitment for Classes IX and X. Following this, he was produced before the Special CBI Court in Alipore, where he was once again shown as ‘arrested’ in connection with new findings.
The Calcutta High Court, while granting him bail in the current case, noted that Gangopadhyay is a retired individual with significant social standing and has been cooperating with the investigation. Nevertheless, due to the multiplicity of charges and cases filed against him, including fresh CBI arrests, his release remains deferred.
In the ongoing investigation, other high-profile names have surfaced, including Ashok Saha, Subiresh Bhattacharya, and Shantiprasad Sinha, all of whom are facing separate allegations related to the recruitment scam. The CBI and ED continue to investigate the matter intensively, which has impacted the lives and careers of thousands of aspiring teachers and non-teaching staff across West Bengal.
Gangopadhyay is alleged to be one of the key facilitators in a system that many believe destroyed the professional futures of countless youth in the state, further fueling public outrage over the depth of institutional corruption in the school recruitment system.