The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday raided the residences of a Trinamul Congress minister, MLA and a municipal councillor, triggering a bellicose exchange of words between Bengal’s ruling party and the BJP.
Competitive homage from the two parties to Swami Vivekananda’s legacy on the 19th-century philosopher-monk’s birth anniversary was upstaged by rancorous statements against each other as the ED raided multiple premises of fire and emergency services minister Sujit Bose, Baranagar MLA Tapas Roy and North Dum Dum councillor Subodh Chakraborty for hours from early on Friday.
Not long after ED officials left on the conclusion of the raids on his premises in the evening, Baranagar MLA Roy said there was never any chance of his involvement in corruption. “These raids happened perhaps only because I am part of Trinamul,” said Roy.
“If anybody can say that I have taken even a rupee for getting work done, I will submit my resignation to the chief minister right away,” said minister Bose after the ED team left his premises. “I have been in public life for 45 years. I have no connection with these things, whatsoever.”
All the three — Roy, Bose and Chakraborty — handle certain organisational responsibilities in Trinamul in the key district of North 24-Parganas. The district has five Lok Sabha seats and 33 Assembly segments and the party has been facing considerable instability there since the incarceration of heavyweight and minister Jyoti Priya Mallick.
Bose was recently entrusted by chief minister Mamata Banerjee to oversee Trinamul’s general election preparedness for the Dum Dum and Basirhat seats.
While Mallick has been behind bars on account of alleged involvement in a public distribution system “scam”, the Friday raids by the central agency were in relation to suspected irregularities in recruitments to certain civic bodies in the state.
Trinamul Rajya Sabha member Santanu Sen said he found it difficult to believe that the alacrity of the central agencies in North 24-Parganas, days from a similar threat issued in public by the BJP’s Suvednu Adhikari, was merely coincidental.
At Vivekananda’s north Calcutta residence, Adhikari mounted a scathing offensive on the Trinamul regime over alleged corruption.
“It is an auspicious day for such activities by the ED. Trinamul Congress runs one of the most corrupt governments in the long history of this state. The ED is conducting raids as they have with them substantial evidence against many involved in this civic recruitment scam,” said Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.
He advised Bose and other Trinamul leaders to keep their bags packed as a long stint behind bars was likely.
Trinamul national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who went to the same venue hours later, refused to issue
a political statement from the hallowed home of Vivekananda or politicise the occasion of the icon’s birth anniversary.
However, industry minister Shashi Panja responded sharply.
“Adhikari and others in his party have shown since the morning their eagerness to bask in media attention at Swami Vivekananda’s residence on this occasion, which is why they have been issuing political statements of rather questionable quality on this sacred ground, in the name of paying tributes to our icon,” she said.
Urban development minister and Calcutta mayor Firhad Hakim said the BJP had with it in Bengal nothing but the power of central agencies. “So it is a given that that one, hackneyed weapon would be overused by them. We, on the other hand, have the power of the people’s love and blessings,” he said.
