Kolkata, Jun 29 (IANS): Similar to the multi-crore school recruitment scandal in West Bengal, optical marks recognition (OMR) sheets recovered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are leading to crucial clues also in the municipalities' recruitment case.

The CBI recently searched the premises of 14 municipalities and the documents recovered from four of them included 1,000 OMR sheets for written examinations for appointments.

The central agencys, according to sources, has made a list of candidates whose names have appeared in the OMR sheets along with their relevant details.

The aim is to have an idea of how many of them actually got appointments in these municipalities at a later stage.

The sources said that if necessary, some of them might be summoned for questioning.

Five out of the 14 municipalities have however, displayed extreme non-cooperation related to handing over of appointment-related documents, with the authorities either claiming the documents to have been misplaced or denying keeping records.

Sources said that the central agency is now considering sending legal notices to these five municipalities.

The order for a CBI probe in the municipalities’ recruitment case was originally given by the Calcutta High Court’s single judge bench of Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay.

The state government first approached the Supreme Court challenging the decision. However, it referred the matter back to the high court.

Thereafter, the state government approached the high court’s single judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha.

However, Justice Singh upheld the order by Justice Gangopadhyay and directed the central agencies to continue with their probe.

The state government then approached a higher bench of the high court challenging the decision by Justice Sinha.

On June 15, a division bench of the Justices Tapabrata Chakraborty and Partha Sarathi Chatterjee upheld Justice Sinha's order.