Manik Bhattacharya failed to pay fine; HC orders seizure of property

Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta High Court has directed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to seize all the properties, both domestic and international, belonging to Manik Bhattacharya, a Trinamool MLA and former Chairman of the Board of Primary Education, who was arrested in a teacher recruitment scam case.

The directive was issued on Monday, after the court expressed its strong displeasure over Bhattacharya's failure to pay a fine of Rs. 7 lakh imposed on him in two separate cases. In January 2023, Justice Abhijit Ganguly had initially imposed a fine of Rs. 2 lakh on Bhattacharya, but as he failed to pay it, an additional fine of Rs. 5 lakh was imposed on him.

This was in response to a complaint filed by a candidate named Sahila Parveen in 2017, who had sought her OMR sheet under the Right to Information Act. Parveen had paid the prescribed fee but alleged that she was not provided with a proper OMR sheet by the Board of Primary Education, which led to Bhattacharya's fine.

Despite being ordered to deposit the fine within two weeks, Bhattacharya neither paid the penalty nor applied it to the court within the specified time frame. As a result, the Calcutta High Court has now instructed the ED to confiscate all of his properties.