The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday questioned Trinamul Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee for around nine hours in connection with alleged irregularities in recruitment to state-aided schools.

The Diamond Harbour MP reached the ED office at the CGO complex in Salt Lake around 11.15am and came out after interrogation around 8.45pm.

Abhishek’s questioning came on a day when the 14-member coordination committee of the INDIA bloc met in Delhi. Abhishek is Trinamul’s representative on the committee and was scheduled to attend the meeting till he was summoned.

“The central government does not want Abhishek Banerjee to reach Delhi and participate in the coordination committee meeting of INDIA,” Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut said ahead of the meeting on Wednesday.

In Calcutta, a senior ED official said Abhishek’s questioning came a day ahead of the central agency’s submission of a report to Calcutta High Court on the progress in the probe.

Earlier in August, Justice Amrita Sinha of the high court had directed the ED to submit a report on September 14 with respect to the CEO of Leaps and Bounds Private Limited in the wake of searches at the company’s different offices.

On August 21, a day after Abhishek returned from the US, separate ED teams carried out searches at three offices of Leaps and Bounds Private Limited in New Alipore, Joka and Thakurpukur in Calcutta. The searches lasted over 17 hours.

Senior ED officials said the summons to Abhishek was to question him in connection with alleged irregularities in recruitments to state-aided schools after Sujay Bhadra alias Kalighater kaku, one of the accused in the case who is in judicial custody, said he had worked for the Trinamul national general-secretary.

The central investigating agency has said Bhadra was the chief operating officer (COO) of Leaps and Bounds Private Limited, whose CEO is Abhishek.

In an official press release within days of the searches, the ED said the company was “used for making dubious transactions running into crores of rupees” and Bhadra remained “a director in this company from April 2012 to March 2016”.

“We would like to clarify a few things from him on the basis of our search operations at the three offices of Leaps and Bounds Private Limited,” a senior ED official had said while refusing to go into further details about the summons.

While addressing a rally of the Trinamul Chhatra Parishad in August, Mamata had said a conspiracy was being hatched against Abhishek and suggested a purported plan to arrest him.

Abhishek, who had faced the the ED multiple times in the past, has always denied wrongdoing and alleged that political vendetta was behind the frequent interrogations.