Even as the Trinamool Congress tried hard to grapple with the Narada expose that showed a galaxy of its senior leaders accepting wads of currency notes from a company in lieu of future favours there were more trouble brewing for the Bengal ruling outfit.
Three public interest litigations were filed on Wednesday in Calcutta High Court demanding CBI investigation into the Narada bribery case.
While the Congress and the BJP filed two cases a third was filed by an advocate AK Sarangi. The matter is likely to be heard on Friday by the Division Bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur.
This apart from reports, that the Enforcement Directorate had started proceedings in the case and had approached the news channel concerned for the copies of the videotapes.
According to sources Pradesh Congress leaders Abdul Mannan and Amitva Chakrbarty filed the petition following instructions from the party high command.
Though filed separately the petitions demanded CBI investigation into the case and also pleaded with the Court to debar the politicians concerned from contesting the upcoming Bengal Assembly elections till the investigation was complete.
Advocate Sarangi in his part pleaded that an investigation by the police was not possible in the case as the persons shown accepting bribe in the Narada tapes were all influential people.
The legal proceedings apart, cracks seemed to appear in the Trinamool monolith with reports that at least two MPs had openly defied Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s directions to launch a counter-attack against the Opposition on the Narada bribery case.
Sources said party MPs Dinesh Trivedi and Sugato Bose conspicuously absented themselves from the Wednesday’s dharna site at lok Sabha where the other Trinamool MPs raised slogans against the “conspiracy” being hatched against the party by the left, Congress and BJP.
“A complaint has already been sent to the party supremo detailing the whole development” a party source said. Trivedi and Bose had advised the leadership to demand a probe to decide the authenticity of the vedeotapes instead of defending the politicians as that only sullied the image of the party further.
Meanwhile, in a related development the opposition councilors of Kolkata Metropolitan Corporation were attacked allegedly manhandled by their Trinamool counterparts even as they demanded the resignation of Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee who also appears in the Narada videotapes accepting bribe from a person.