In what could send the Trinamool Congress pulse rate racing, the Enforcement Directorate has issued fresh summons to Trinamool Congress MP and the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee to appear before its officials at the CGO complex at Salt Lake on Thursday. Banerjee who was quizzed by the agency officials earlier too has been summoned in connection with the school recruitment scam.
The summons to Banerjee was issued on a day when the Income Tax Department conducted marathon raids at the premises of Tanmoy Ghosh, a BJP-turned-TMC MLA. Ghosh who won the Bankura-Bishnupur Assembly seats on BJP ticket had joined the TMC a few days ago.
The fresh summons to Abhishek who is also the nephew of Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee comes amid intense search operations conducted by the ED in the multi-crore public distribution system and crop procurement scam in which the Agency late last month arrested former Bengal Food Minister Jyoti Priya Mallick.
Putting up a brave face the TMC leadership however said that the party would not succumb to the vendetta politics and pressure tactic of the BJP and that the junior Banerjee would definitely appear before the ED on Thursday.
Senior Bengal minister Shashi Panja on Wednesday said that the “frequent summons to our highest leaders is nothing but a result of vendetta politics.” She said that the ED was being made to embarrass the Chief Minister and “harass the Abhishek Banerjee because he has repeatedly humbled them politically … having failed to handle him politically, they are trying to harass him by using the central agencies.”
TMC’s two-time MP who had earlier been questioned in connection with coal pilferage scam in Delhi too before being quizzed for more than 13 hours at its Kolkata office this time in relation to the teachers’ recruitment scam — that has seen former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and MLAs Manik Bhattacharya and Jivan Krishna Saha going to jail — had on a previous occasion said that he was being harassed by the ED as unlike Suvendu Adhikari he had refused to mortgage his spine to the BJP.
“I will come as many times as they call me because that is my legal duty … but every time I will continue to ask the question as to why Suvendu Adhikari who is an FIR-named accused being called is not being called by the agencies … I will also assume that I am being harassed because my party and I have refused to bow before them and mortgage my spine before them unlike many political turncoats who have done so,” Banerjee earlier said.
State BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya however dismissed claims of vendetta politics saying his party never believed in retributive measures. “BJP is a huge party with pan Indian presence and does not need to use ED or anything against insignificant political forces … they are already in people’s hit list and they will be drowned in the coming elections.”
Meanwhile, within days of his joining the TMC I-T raids were conducted at Ghosh’s rice mills, hotels, shops and other business establishments, sources said. Raids were continuing when reports came late on Wednesday evening leading to the TMC leadership reiterating its “vendetta” cry.
“We have been telling for long that all these allegations of scams are simply rubbish … rather these are the results of BJP’s vendetta politics … this has once again been proved by the I-T raids on Tanmoy Ghosh’s properties … this is because he had left their corrupt and faction-ridden party to join Mamata Banerjee’s development oriented outfit,” TMC leader Kunal Ghosh said.