There was more embarrassment for the Trinamool Congress Government as the Enforce Directorate investigating into the teachers’ recruitment scam has started preparations to arrest yet another senior Trinamool Congress leader and a member of the Mamata Banerjee cabinet.
The name of the minister is Chandranath Sinha who is an MLA from Birbhum district.
According to ED sources the Minister had failed to account for Rs 12.5 crore that was traced to bank accounts related to him.
Earlier even as the ED petitioned a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court seeking his custodial interrogation after he moved the Court in the wake of a gubernatorial clearance for ED actions the Minister sought time from the Court to explain his conduct. The court is likely to hear the Agency’s plea on Saturday.
On September 6, Sinha had surrendered before the court seeking time to come out with his own clarifications.
The court granted him interim bail on a personal bond of Rs 10,000 with certain conditions.
According to ED officials the Agency wanted to know the “source of funds behind a series of phased inward remittances, largely in cash, credited to the bank accounts” during a particular period as also “the omission of these transactions from the tax declarations of the minister and his family members.”
The ED had in its chargesheet had referred to bank transactions worth crores.
The account — with a Kolkata branch of a public sector bank — is jointly held by the minister and his wife, Kuntala Sinha, sources in the Agency said.
The ED in its sixth supplementary chargesheet, stated that Rs 1.18 crore was deposited in cash into the account between January 2016 and November 2019, identified as the peak period of the alleged school recruitment scam.
While the Minister could not be contacted a senior TMC leader said that the “as the State elections will draw nearer such allegations leveled by the ED and CBI will continue to increase” adding however that his “party would not take responsibility of individual acts.”
Jiban Krishna Saha a TMC MLA was also last month arrested by the ED from his residence in the school job recruitment scam.
He was presently in jail custody.
A number of TMC leaders including former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and MLA Manik Bhattacharjee — who was also the chairperson of the TET board — were arrested by the ED in the same case.
Chatterjee who was arrested in 2022 was still in jail along with senior officials including a former Vice Chancellor, Chairperson of State Board of Secondary Education etc.