At a time when Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is losing no opportunity to attack the Congress-led UPA-II for giving her State a step-motherly treatment, her close aide and senior Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy on Thursday quietly met Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram giving rise to a host of speculations.
While Roy himself claimed he met the Finance Minister to press for restructuring of Bengal’s debts that accumulated during the left rule informed sources said the parley was aimed at precluding the Enforcement Directorate from grilling some top Trinamool Congress leaders in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund case.
The Thursday’s development comes amid reports that the ED and Serious Fraud Investigation Office were preparing to question some “very senior” Trinamool leaders including a couple of Ministers and MPs after grilling its Rajya Sabha Members Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose.
“We have repeatedly told the Centre that our Government should not be made responsible for the debts taken by the earlier left Front Government. Every year we have to part with thousands of crores in interests of the loans taken by the previous Government hampering the development of the State. We have been asking for a moratorium and restructuring of the loans and so I met the Finance Minister today,” the former Railway Minister said.
Notwithstanding his claims what tended to fire speculations was the proximity in time of two meetings with the same agenda. A group of 28 Trinamool MPs led by Roy had met the Finance Minister on October 21 to Press for the same issue.
“A group of 28 MPs had met the Finance Minister on October 21 on the issue of restructuring the debt. But we had been asked to give some clarifications. So I had come today to give those clarifications,” Roy said after emerging from the 45-minute meeting.
Curiously the Thursday’s development comes close on the wheels of the SFIO which works under the Corporate Ministry grilling Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Srinjoy Bose on Tuesday. Insiders said the two-hour grilling of Bose — by the SFIO which has no powers to arrest — also an editor of a
largely circulated Bengali daily brought to the fore some crucial names which were in the process of being forwarded to the ED.
Apart from Bose’s grilling what seems to have also unnerved the State Government is the emerging of the name of a senior Bengal Minister in the scam. Kunal Ghosh the rebel Trinamool MP — who has been questioned by the State-controlled Special Investigation Team about half-a-dozen times for his alleged connection with Saradha chief Sudipto Sen — had earlier dropped the name of this Minister saying he could give some crucial clues about the scam.
Meanwhile the Opposition CPI(M) alleged the Thursday’s meeting was aimed at preventing the ED from, questioning the top Trinamool leadership which was allegedly involved in the scam.
“A big number of Trinamool leaders will come in the net of the investigators if the scam is investigated closely. There is a close link between the meteoric rise of the Saradha chit fund group and the Trinamool Congress particularly after 2008,” former CPI(M) MP Md Salim said alleging how “the Trinamool Government has engaged the SIT not to catch the culprits which include a host of MPs and Ministers and their top leaders but to collect data on which Trinamool leader has how much information on the scam.” He maintained “the SIT is gathering the data and handing it over to the Chief Minister so that she can manage the crisis better.”