A rude shock came for the existent government of West Bengal when the state’s Higher Education Council president resigned from his post amid various controversies that filled the air of the government body. The man who sat at the apex chair of the government body for the past two years was finding the affair with the chair too hot to be handled of late.
Muktinath Chattopadhyay handed over his resignation letter to education minister Bratya Basu during a meeting they had on last Wednesday. Famous as the former principal of Kolkata’s Charu Chandra College, Chattopadhyay had taken up the duty of heading the council once the current government came into power two years back.
The resignation of Chattopadhyay was subsequently followed by the ouster of the council’s secretary Achintya Pal from his post by the government’s education think-tank who found it justified enough. A complete reshuffle of the top posts of the council is thus expected after such happenings in the past few days.
Interestingly, Chattopadhyay insists that he quit the post owing to genuinely viable “health concerns”. He said that he was suffering from a past eye problem over the last many days and hence has requested the education minister to relive him off his duties as he was finding it too troublesome to work with the health issue.
However, Chattopadhyay agreed that there was mounting pressure on him for the past few days over the controversy of tender allocation for the publication of textbooks for the academic curriculum of classes XI and XII. But he did not seem to divulge the actual facts pertaining to his anger over the tender controversy that led to his untimely resignation.
It has been said that Chattopadhyay had always been the blue-eyed boy in the eyes of the current Trinamool Congress government owing to his proximity to the top brass of the party’s ranks include chief minister Mamata Banerjee herself. Presumably this factor became decisive when he was appointed as the president of the council as soon as the Trinamool Congress government came to power in the state. He succeeded Onkarsadhan Adhikari appointed during the previous Left Front government whom the new chief minister dispensed off his services with immediate effect on coming to power.
Chattopadhyay said, “I had previously communicated my desire to quit the post on 3rd June as soon as the higher secondary results were published but Basu had some other plans and did not accept my resignation. This time hopefully he will accept my resignation and help me to unload the burden off my shoulders. I want to spend the remaining two years of my service with the college from where I was picked up for the council’s apex chair.”
Reported Chattopadhyay had furiously vented the anger over the government’s demeanour to stay aloof of his advices and ignore him in every possible sense. The controversy over the tender of publication and selling of eight books led the former aides over a collision path. Sources say that the secretary was also axed to divert the attention from Chattopadhyay’s resignation so that people don’t feel that he has been made the scapegoat for the entire fiasco.
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Higher Education In West Bangal
President Resigns In Wb
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