Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said she had heard “everything” in the context of graft allegations against some senior Trinamul Congress leaders and found “nothing” by way of admissible evidence before the judiciary.
The Trinamul chairperson also suggested that no concrete proof had been found yet against Partha Chatterjee, whom she had dropped from the cabinet and the party following his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate in the alleged School Service Commission recruitment scam.
“I actually want the BJP and its central agencies to do more, to up the ante, to do whatever they can… because ultimately everyone will see that nothing that could be proved according to the law exists… a big zero,” Mamata told an audience of thousands of Trinamul leaders and workers at the Netaji Indoor Stadium here in the afternoon.
“I have heard everything. Kichchhu nei, money rakhbeyn (There is nothing at all, remember this). Nothing is there…. So, are we prepared for the fight?” she asked, to thunderous applause from the audience.
Much of her 50-minute address was aimed at allaying fears and soothing nerves in Trinamul, by addressing some key issues and through disdainful dismissal of uncomfortable allegations.
For instance, Mamata brought up the purported rift between her and nephew Abhishek Banerjee in the last winter and called it baseless and speculation motivated by sections of the media.
“What they don’t understand is that these divisions will never exist,” she said to loud cheers.
The chief minister stood by Birbhum strongman Anubrata Mondal as well as Partha Chatterjee (although without naming him).
“You (the media) show so-called source-based stories of rooms full of money, jewellery, and other assets being recovered at various places,” she said, in a clear reference to Chatterjee, from whose close associate Arpita Mukherjee’s possession such wealth had allegedly been recovered by the ED.
“But has anything been proven yet… anything at all? We believe in the law,” added Mamata, in the first instance of apparent support to the former Trinamul secretary-general.
She brought up raids by the CBI against minister Moloy Ghatak on Wednesday, lauding his news conference calling out the allegations as “lies”.
Mamata extolled Mondal for his work and abilities, accusing the BJP of trying to have him removed from the scene with the hopes of winning a couple of Lok Sabha seats in his area in 2024.
“They will not succeed. Those who have come from Birbhum… take this vow here, today, that you will intensify the fight, three-fold. For as long as Keshto (Mondal) does not return. When he does, give him the respect he deserves. When he gets out, accord him a hero’s welcome,” said the chief minister.
Mamata accused the central agencies of being the BJP’s pets and the party of ordering them to target Ghatak and his cabinet colleagues such as Aroop Biswas, Firhad Hakim and Chandrima Bhattacharya, besides Abhishek, in order to weaken Trinamul.
Attacking the BJP-led Centre over the state of the economy and its sale of national assets, she demanded answers on its unfulfilled promises.
“Everybody, focus on just one slogan: BJP’r agency chai na, chakri chai (We don’t want the BJP’s agencies, we want jobs). The BJP believes in abolishing jobs. We believe in generating them,” added Mamata, before warning elected representatives of her party against putting requests for jobs in writing, amid an ongoing probe by central agencies into an alleged recruitment scam during the Trinamul regime.
She asserted that JDU chief Nitish Kumar in Bihar, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and JMM chief Hemant Soren in Jharkhand, along with her in Bengal, joining forces was enough to ensure the BJP’s defeat nationally in 2024.
Repeatedly attacking the CPM over its criticism of her, the chief minister reiterated her allegation that the Left Front era’s corruption could not be unearthed because of missing paper trails.
“We digitised the processes and there is a record for everything. But we can’t find anything of their 34-year regime. All have been destroyed,” said Mamata.
“Around 99.9 per cent of people in Trinamul are transparent… if a handful have done something wrong, action will be taken against them according to law. But you can’t call everyone a thief,” she added.
Speaking before her, Trinamul national general-secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek once again called Union home minister Amit Shah “India’s biggest Pappu” and vowed to do the needful to defeat the BJP in every corner of Bengal and, eventually, the country.
Modi event
The chief minister said she had decided to skip Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s event of unveiling Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s statue in New Delhi as the Centre “lacked decency” in the way it had asked her to join.
“I recently received an invite, from somebody at an undersecretary level (at the Centre), asking me to be present at the Netaji statue unveiling ceremony…. First of all, an undersecretary cannot write to a chief minister like this, it reflects lack of decency,” she said.
“Even the Union culture minister could find no time to write to me about this? I garlanded Netaji’s statue on Red Road here instead, as my homage,” she added.