Saradha scam probe is reaching closer to the top
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is making things worse for herself, her Government and the ruling Trinamool Congress by assuming a rather silly belligerence over the arrest of her close associate and the State's Transport and Sports Minister Madan Mitra. She has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah of conspiring in the arrest and warned them of the ire of the people of the State.
In keeping with the dramatic flourishes she is known for, Ms Banerjee even dared the two to arrest her! The time for such false bravado is over, and the more the Chief Minister indulges in it, the more her worry gets accentuated. Surely Ms Banerjee knows that it is not the job of either Mr Modi or Mr Shah to arrest or release people.
There is a process of law, and this is being followed by the Central Bureau of Investigation which is probing the massive Saradha chit fund scam. With Mr Mitra's arrest, four very senior Trinamool Congress leaders are now in the CBI net. Given the political sensitivity of the case, it is difficult to believe that the country's premier investigation agency would have arrested these persons without solid prima facie evidence of their involvement in the scam. In any case, they will get every opportunity to prove their innocence — and if they are found innocent by the courts, neither Mr Modi nor Mr Shah can fix them. Ms Banerjee is seeking to project the hugely embarrassing developments to her image and the image of her party and Government, as some sort of a “political conspiracy” by the BJP.
But there is no evidence of that, as the Saradha chit fund scam has come under the Supreme Court's scanner. The apex court had in May ordered a CBI probe into the matter, and since then, one Trinamool leader after another has been caught. There is little doubt that the scam is likely to lead to even more senior leaders of the ruling party in West Bengal, and this is troubling the Chief Minister. At least one of the accused, who had been close to her as a Trinamool leader, actually demanded with the CBI that Ms Banerjee herself should be interrogated in his presence, and that such a move will help spill the beans on who the real beneficiaries of the scam are.
Ms Banerjee's rant and rattle is directly linked to the plunging credibility of her party, Government and of herself as a leader who had so far enjoyed a taint-free political life. The municipal election is round the corner and the Assembly poll will be held in a little over a year's time. In the normal course, the Trinamool Congress supremo would have been sitting pretty, given that both her main adversaries in the State, the left Front and the Congress, remain ruffled by the recent electoral defeats.
But with the BJP making inroads in public perception and popularity in West Bengal, she has now to handle a formidable political foe. No longer can she take her position for granted. This explains her desperate bid to tide over the crisis by resorting to agitational rhetoric and street-level muscle-flexing, and grandly calling the arrests a form of vendetta politics. She can mobilise huge irate crowds on the streets, true. But the ghost of the Saradha scam is not going to be frightened by such shows of strength.