BJP trying best to arrange Shah’s meet with WBSSC scam protesters

KOLKATA: As Amit Shah is scheduled to visit Kolkata on November 5 to attend and chair the Eastern Zonal Council meeting at the West Bengal secretariat, the state unit of the BJP is going all out to arrange an interaction between the Union Home Minister and those protesting for over 500 days against the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam.

State BJP sources said that an interaction is possible in two ways -- first, Shah would have to make a short visit to the dais of the protesters in Kolkata, while the second option is that a small delegation of the agitators are taken to a place where the Union Minister is housed.

"Requests have been forwarded to the Union Home Minister's office so that sometime can be brought out of his busy schedule in Kolkata for that meeting with the agitators," said a BJP state committee member on the condition of anonymity.

State BJP spokesman, Samik Bhattacharya, however said that nothing has been finalised yet.

During his visit to Kolkata, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had an interaction with the WBSSC scam agitators.

He then launched a scathing attack against the state government and claimed that despite rampant corruption in the process of the teachers' recruitment in West Bengal, it is yet to come out of its "Kumbhakaran-like slumber".

He also said that although his Ministry wrote a letter to the state government on this count, there was n.

Several heavyweights, including former Minister Partha Chatterjee, party legislator and the former president of West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) Manik Bhattacharya and several erstwhile top official West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC), are already in judicial custody over the recruitment irregularities scam.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (and Enforcement Directorate have filed their respective charge sheets in the matter pinpointing the masterminds of the scam.