On the defensive after the Narada expose the Trinamool Congress ruled out any probe into the videographed scam even as Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continued to attack the Opposition for hatching a conspiracy to malign her party before the elections through such “concocted tapes.”
Banerjee who was addressing an election rally in Alipurduar district thundered “having failed to defeat us politically and electorally the Opposition parties like the CPI(M), Congress and the BJP have teamed up to malign our image by releasing such concocted tapes but they should remember that more they take resort to such types of character assassination programmes more the people will vote against them."
The Trinamool will walk in a protest march against the expose in Kolkata on Friday.
Videographed scenes released by a news portal showed Trinamool MPs and State Ministers taking bribe from a fictitious company in lieu of promising future favours. Among those who were shown in the tape accepting bribe were senior MPs and former Union Ministers Saugato Roy, Sultan Ahmed, Kakoli Ghoshdastidar, Kolkata Mayor Sobhan Chatterjee and his deputy Iqbal Ahmed, Ministers Subroto Mukherjee and Firhad alias Bobby Hakim.
On whether the State Government was planning to order a probe into the Narada expose in order to absolve itself from the infamy party general secretary and State Minister Partho Chatterjee said "there is no question of any probe. We are not going to order any inquiry."
When reminded that it was in the interest of the Trinamool Congress to show that its leaders were clean he said "we will not order any inquiry as we are confident about our leaders" adding the people would give the "conspirators" a befitting reply in the elections.