The Bengal Opposition outfits on Thursday demanded immediate resignation of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee “for the sake of impartial investigation and to do justice to her oft-stated clean image as a politician.”
The immediate trigger for the demand was the reported shady deal struck in 2010, when Banerjee was the Railway Minister, between the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation, a Railway Ministry subsidiary, and the tainted Saradha Tours and Travels.
“It is clear from whatever reports that have come out that the then Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee knew Sudipto Sen (the jailed Saradha chit fund kingpin) and that the deal between the IRCTC and the Saradha was struck during her tenure,” Bengal Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said.
“Going by the reports it seems that Banerjee had used her chair and influence to promote a scamster like Sudipto Sen. In such circumstances the propriety demands that she keeps herself away from the Chief Minister’s chair. She often projects herself as the picture of honesty and integrity. If that is so then she should resign as the Chief Minister immediately till she gets the clean chit from the Central Bureau of Investigations,” the former junior Railway Minister and Behrampore Congress MP said adding the “CBI must interrogate her and show no leniency in that regard because she and none else was the Railway Minister when the deal was signed.”
When asked to comment on the issue, State BJP president Rahul Sinha also said that those who were occupying public office and whose names were cropping up in the chit fund scam should quit their posts.“Though I would not pinpoint any one person as A, B or C for resignation I would say that people occupying public offices and whose names are cropping up during the investigations should resign from their posts for the sake of investigations and also to uphold their clean image as is often claimed,” Sinha said reminding how “lK Advaniji had resigned from his post during the hawala scam probe and only returned when his name was cleared during investigations.”
Apparently encouraged by the prevailing confusion in the Trinamool ranks over former Railway Minister Mukul Roy’s loaded statement saying no deal with the Saradha was struck during his tenure, Sinha said, “One of their very senior leaders recently said that he had not signed any deal with Saradha and someone else had done so. This proves that the Trinamool is currently plagued by mutual mistrust because from the top to bottom the entire leadership is soaked in chit fund fraud.”
Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate probing the money laundering part of the Saradha fraud had issued fresh summons to the State Textiles Minister SP Mukherjee. He had been asked to appear for interrogation with registration papers of a cement factory that he had sold to the Saradha boss. It was reported that a large part of the land showed in the occupation of the cement plant belonged to the Forest Department.