Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee again slapped a libel notice on Union Minister of State Babul Supriyo for making defamatory remarks against him and has asked him to apologise within 72 hours.
This is the second such incident, as Supriyo is already contesting a previous defamation suit filed by the same petitioner. A civil court issued an injunction order against the Minister last December directing him not to use libelous language against Banerjee. The MP has threatened the Union Minister with contempt proceeding for his latest remark.
The immediate trigger for the legal action was a remark made by Supriyo who said that the alleged “Bhaipo” (nephew) being referred to by the opposition parties including the BJP leaders while referring to corruption charges was none other than Abhishek Banerjee who is also the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The Minister had earlier accused Banerjee of benefiting from the coal and cow smuggling racket against which a CBI investigation was on saying the oft repeated word Bhaipo stood for none other than the junior Banerjee.
The CBI investigating the rackets has been after two businessmen Lala and Mishra who had alleged connection with the Trinamool Congress’ topmost echelon and who reportedly acted as a medium of money transfer in the mutli-crore cow and coal scam. Properties of both the businessmen, who have gone underground, been sealed.
Meanwhile, in a related development the Chief Minister on Wednesday paid a sudden visit to the Raj Bhavan meeting Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar for more than an hour. With no love lost between the two constitutional authorities the meeting is seen as extraordinary as it took place after a gap of about 11 months.
In fact the Governor made a circuitous attack on the State Government and the ruling party on Wednesday morning saying political violence should be shunned and Bengal should present itself as a violence free state insofar as the conduct of elections were concerned. He also criticized the way the national BJP leaders were referred to as “outsiders” by the TMC leadership in Bengal.
Elsewhere more TMC leaders continued to speak incoherently --- the latest being Rathin Chakrabarty the Mayor of Howrah.
Alleging that all was not well in the Trinamool scheme of things Chakrabarty said while reerring to the resignation of State Sports Minister and former cricketer Laxmi Ratan Shukla “the issues that had to be addressed had never been addressed despite attention of the top leadership was drawn to solve them … this is why many people are today quitting the party.”
On whether he was thinking of quitting the party he quoted the famous words of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa saying “jato mat, tato path” implying there are as many roads as here are views.
Apart from Chakrabarty, senior Minister Rajib Banerjee’s conduct too continued to bother the TMC leadership with the said leader continuing to skip the Cabinet meeting besides maintaining a cold silence.
“He is not in touch with any enior leader neither has he clarified his stance with the Chief Minister after speaking in public about the ongoing nepotism in the party,” a TMC insider said.