The CPM today condemned the police action against protesting candidates outside TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee’s office while alleging that another important aspect of the SSC corruption has come to the fore, relating to a discrepancy in allotment of marks in exchange of bribes.

The CPM today criticized the chief minister, Mamata Banerjee for allegedly maintaining silence on the recruitment of the SSC candidates and instead letting Abhishek Banerjee, who isn’t a cabinet member, deal with the issue separately. The CPM state secretary Md Salim questioned, “Who is Abhishek Banerjee to assure jobs to the candidates? Is he part of the state government? Why is Mamata repeatedly bluffing the candidates? First, she falsely assures them of solving the issues, and now her nephew is being allowed to bluff them.”

He added, “Yet again police were unleashed on these candidates when they protested outside Abhishek’s office today. Fortunately, most of the protesting SSC candidates did not attempt to visit his office but continued their protest outside the Gandhi statue at Dharmatala. The duo, Mamata and Abhishek, should stop playing with the lives of these job aspirants.”

Meanwhile, the CPM MP and advocate Bikashranjan Bhattacharya, during a press conference by eminent personalities, who criticised the TMC government for “rampant corruption”, said, “Yet another aspect of the SSC corruption has come to light. Marks were unfairly allotted so the candidates without merit bag the posts.” He explained, “If the criteria to get the job is securing 55 marks in total, candidates without merit who reached somewhere close to 45 in their written examinations were given a full 15 marks for the interview in return for a bribe. The merited candidate, who scored above 50, was deprived by allotting poor marks in the interview.”

He alleged ever since the TMC government came in 2011, one after another recruitment corruption has come to light, including in the Public Service Commission. “However, on previous occasions, although the state government managed to escape by either moving the Supreme Court or falsely assuring the Calcutta High Court of corrective action, this time the high court realized the scale of corruption and ordered a court-monitored probe in these cases.”