Days after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed displeasure at the repeated CBI calls to Trinamool Congress headquarters, the agency on Monday dispatched a notice to the Trinamool Bhawan asking the party to submit all income and expenditure details from 2010 to 2014 within a week’s time. In a related development, the Tripura Congress on Monday demanded Chief Minister Manik Sarkar’s resignation for trying to shield the jailed Rose Valley Group chairman.
The CBI now probing the “larger-conspiracy angle” in the multi-crore chit fund scam reportedly asked Trinamool Congress national general secretary Subroto Bakshi to submit the details of the party’s income and expenditures including those from advertisements, donations, sale of Jago Bangla the party mouthpiece. Though senior party leader Partho Chatterjee tried to put up a brave front saying “we shall reply only after evaluating the contents of the notice as and when it comes” insiders said the section in the letter demanding information on the proceeds received from “sale of paintings” had unnerved the TMC brass.
The Opposition had repeatedly demanded the Trinamool to name the buyers of Banerjee’s paintings particularly the one that was sold for an alleged Rs1.84 crore. The then BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi had also raised the issue during his pre-general elections meetings in Bengal. Banerjee had often claimed about running her outfit by selling her paintings and not by taking donations from the rich industrialists.
When asked to comment on the notice, Chatterjee said the “party receives thousands of such letters” adding “the CBI has become a tool in the hands of a particularly party and it acts only during the elections. But the people of Bengal are watching the conspiracy and give a befitting reply.”
Earlier Banerjee had expressed her strong displeasure after the CBI officials had called up the Trinamool Bhawan asking for Bakshi also a Member of lok Sabha. The Monday’s development came days after exchange of “registered letters” between Bakshi and his predecessor Mukul Roy who reportedly told the former that the all details of income and expenditure had been in the custody of the party office copies of which were available with the Chief Minister.
The present Trinamool leadership was of the opinion that the CBI should ask for the details from Roy as he had been the national general secretary during the mentioned period of 2010-2014 during which the party had fought three crucial elections. Meanwhile, Tripura Pradesh Congress president Sudip Roy Burman on Monday raised a demand for his State Chief Minister Manik Sarkar’s resignation for trying to shield jailed Rose Valley Group chairman Gautam Kundu.
Alleging that Sarkar Government had been trying to shield Kundu and other chit fund owners as they were hand-in-glove Burman threw out Tripura CPI(M)’s contention that its Government was the first to order a CBI enquiry into the chit fund scam. “The Manik Sarkar Government did not specify the amount of the money involved in the scam while writing to the CBI to probe the Rose Valley Group in 2013 only to ensure that it was not investigated” he alleged.
The main allegation against Sarkar was that he had attended a Rose Valley function in 2008 when the Group was inaugurating a children’s park.