A high court division bench will hear on Wednesday an appeal by Trinamul leader Abhishek Banerjee against an order by Justice Amrita Sinha of the court instructing the Enforcement Directorate chief to ensure that the “inquiry” scheduled for October 3 was not “hampered in anyway”.
The ED had asked Banerjee to appear before it on October 3 in connection with the investigation into alleged irregularities in government-aided schools in Bengal.
The division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Uday Kumar said Banerjee should have informed the ED that he would not be able to appear before its officers because of a political programme fixed earlier.
Banerjee had announced through his X (formerly Twitter) handle that he would attend a political programme in Delhi on October 2 and 3 and dared anyone to “stop if you can”.
On Tuesday, moving the appeal for Banerjee in the high court, lawyer Kishore Datta submitted that the agency was deliberately calling his client for questioning on days he was to attend previously scheduled political programmes.
“The ED always calls my client for interrogation on dates that are fixed for his political programmes. On earlier occasions, he had appeared for interrogation even though there were programmes of his party. This time, because of a political programme of his party in Delhi, he could not appear,” Datta submitted.
After hearing Datta, Justice Sen said “your client should have informed the ED (before)” and asked Datta to appear before the bench on Wednesday after serving copies of his appeals to the other parties.
Appearing for the ED, advocate Dhiraj Trivedi said: “If he (Banerjee) has difficulties in appearing before the agency today, he can appear tomorrow.”
Neither the bench nor Datta made any comment on the ED counsel’s submission.