Amit Malviya accuses Bengal CM of 'systematically damaging' state's education system

Kolkata, April 18 (IANS) BJP's Information Technology cell chief and the party's central observer for West Bengal, Amit Malviya, on Friday accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of “systematically damaging” the state’s education system.

To drive forward his point, he referred to the judgment by Calcutta High Court’s single-judge bench of Justice Biswajit Basu on April 7 ordering the West Bengal government to halt salary payments to 313 teachers employed in government-aided schools in the hills of Darjeeling, Kurseong, and Kalimpong that come under the jurisdiction of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).

“The Court found these appointments to be unjustified and in clear violation of due process. Shockingly, many of the appointees lacked the mandatory Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree required to teach at the secondary and higher secondary levels. Mamata Banerjee can no longer hide behind rhetoric. The people of Bengal are being deceived—again,” said Malviya in a statement posted on the wall of his official X handle.

On April 7, while ordering the halt of salary of these 313 teachers, Justice Basu questioned why taxpayers’ money from the state exchequer should be utilized to pay salaries to teachers whose entire appointment process was illegal.

To recall, in April last year, a division bench upheld an earlier order of the same court directing a CBI probe into the complaints of recruitment irregularities in schools run by the GTA.

The order for a CBI probe into the matter was given by the single-judge bench of Justice Biswajit Basu. However, the state government moved the division bench of Justice Harish Tandon and Justice Madhuresh Prasad against the ruling by the single-judge bench. However, as the division bench had also upheld the order of the single- judge bench the CBI probe in the matter is still on.

--IANS

src/pgh