Kolkata, Mar 4 (IANS): The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday accused the West Bengal government of 'unnecessarily' holding back the statutory permission to the central agency to frame charges against the state government employees accused of their involvement in the multi-crore cash-for-school jobs case.

During a hearing in the matter at the Calcutta High Court’s division bench of Justices Debangshu Basak and Shabbar Rashidi, which has been specifically entrusted by the Supreme Court to hear the school jobs cases, the CBI counsel claimed that although the central agency had sought statutory permission from the state government to frame charges way back in 2022, the latter has been sitting on the appeal since then.

The CBI counsel said that as per norms, the framing of charges against any government servant requires the nod of the state government concerned.

“But since the state government has been delaying giving the nod for such a long time, the process of framing charges could not be started as yet despite submission of charge sheets in this matter,” argued the CBI counsel.

The state government counsel argued that giving such a nod is a time-consuming process since a lot of documents need to the examined thoroughly first.

The bench observed that two years is a pretty long time to complete the examination process and pass the approval.

For quite some time now, the central agencies have been accusing the state government of delaying the process of giving the requisite nods to begin the process of framing of charges against state government employees.

Now by raising the matter in the high court, the CBI has made it official. Legal experts feel that the state government will be under pressure now to act in the matter.