Banerjee was at the CGO Complex in Kolkata by 11 AM on Monday to face the Enforcement Directorate about the primary school jobs matter. You could say his time in the hot seat is part of a closer look at how West Bengal has been handling its hiring, ever since the top court on April 3, 2025, threw out more than 25,000 of them as being nothing but vitiated and tainted.
He had already been in for a session with the West Bengal CID the day before, where they were looking into some supposed forgeries of TMC MLAs’ signatures. One thing after another, it shows the kind of pressure the investigators are bringing to bear, and it puts some hard questions in front of the candidates and the state right now.
Why Banerjee’s ED appearance matters
If you ask the officials, they want to get his side of the story and see how it holds up to the numbers they have. A senior from the ED put it this way: it’s all about the money trail. Who was moving the funds, how did they get from one account to another, and was there any layering to hide where it came from?
Then there are the intermediaries that came to light in their forensic work. The agency will be looking for some straight answers on what seems to be at odds between what was put forward earlier and what they have found in their searches. They want to make sense of the timelines and who the beneficiaries really are.
This is the plan for the day:
– Get Banerjee’s statement on the record for the money laundering case
– Put him in a room with the financial and digital files
– Go over the hiccups in the new material
– Look into the part played by the go-betweens and fronts
– See how the cash made its way through different entities and accounts
The enforcement trail so far
Back in January, the zonal office here in Kolkata put a hold on some immovable property worth some Rs 57.78 crore under the PMLA, 2002, in the SSC Assistant Teacher Scam (for classes IX to XII). This is five months down the line from that.
In the Primary Teachers case, the tally is even higher – they have attached and taken over properties to the tune of Rs 154 crore. And don’t forget July 23, 2022, when they cuffed former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee. That was after they pulled in over Rs 50 crore in cash and a good bit of gold from the home of his right-hand man, Arpita Mukherjee.
Impact on candidates and schools
When the Supreme Court nixed 25,000 teacher and non-teaching posts on April 3, 2025, it left a lot of candidates in limbo and schools with a few headaches. What we are seeing on Monday is the investigators making sure there is some accountability for the finances tied to these recruitments.
For those who have had their job offers rescinded, today is just a point in a long legal road. In the end, it will come down to the paper trail and what can be verified, not to any political posturing.
How the probes are structured
You have the ED with an ECIR for PMLA offences. At the same time, the CBI has a file open under the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act for the alleged shenanigans in the primary teacher hiring.
It is a case of division of labour: the ED is on the money and the property, while the CBI is after the criminal conspiracy and corruption. How well they work together will tell you what comes next.
What to watch next
Now that they have the statements and the electronic bits, it is a matter of corroboration. If the testimony doesn’t add up with the data, you can expect more summons or a wider net cast over the names in the bank and comms records.
Keep an eye on a few things:
– Any more witnesses or middlemen being called in
– If the two probes start to show any common ground
– Word on any new attachments or recoveries
– Fresh orders from the courts on the recruitment side
For the schools and the candidates, the picture will get clearer as the agencies put their cards on the table and the courts do their job. Monday is no final word; it is a formality to see if the story matches the money and the documents behind it.
