Bengal school jobs scam: SC to hear Abhishek Banerjee's plea against CBI quizzing on Friday

The bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Karol has agreed to hear the plea, which was mentioned for an urgent listing by Banerjee's advocate Abhishek Singhvi.

This comes after Banerjee was quizzed by the CBI for over nine hours at the probe agency's Kolkata office on Saturday.

Banerjee, who is the second most important leader of the ruling party, got his name cropped up in the job scam case after arrested TMC youth leader Kuntal Ghosh said he was being pressured to take the name of the former.

Calcutta High Court on Thursday dismissed Banerjee's plea seeking a recall of a previous order which had said the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) could summon him in the jobs scam.

Curtailing his mass political outreach campaign or 'Trinamoole Nabojowar Yatra', Banerjee appeared before the CBI office on Saturday.

After coming out of the quizzing, Banerjee claimed that most of the agents whose names were shown to him during interrogation in the recruitment corruption case have their homes in East Medinipur and Murshidabad.

"I'm wasting my time too, the time of those who interrogated me is also wasted,'' Banerjee said.

He added, "During the interrogation, the names of the agents who were shown to me and asked whether I know them or not, 90 per cent of their addresses are in East Medinipur and Murshidabad. So who was in charge of these two districts on behalf of the party?"

In 2021, former state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee was arrested in the jobs scam after a huge cash of money worth Rs. 50 crore was seized from his aide Arpita Mukherjee's two flats.

Accusing the country's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of political vendetta, Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee said the summons won't be able to stop TMC's campaign adding she would address Abhishek Banerjee's rallies virtually for now.