Three top Opposition party leaders of Bengal, two from the BJP and one from CPI-M, came under the direct firing line of the former Trinamul Congress minister Partha Chatterjee on Thursday. Interestingly the TMC, which claims it has severed ties with the jailed leader for having allegedly masterminded the large-scale school recruitment corruption, threw its entire weight behind Chatterjee’s claims and brought to public domain purported evidences behind those allegations.

Party insiders, however, claimed that the political retort to the Opposition blame game was a result of TMC's efforts to dredge out possible corruption cases of the previous Left regime and those of the BJP leaders as instructed by supremo Mamata Banerjee at the party’s strategy meeting on 17 March.

“Newer corruption revelations which are coming at regular intervals may have dented Trinamul’s image before public eyes and our leader’s instructions infused us with fresh energy. The party was working on this counter move for about a week now and the timing of Partha Chatterjee’s remarks could be a coincidence,” a TMC leader said.

Chatterjee, during his production before the special CBI court in Alipore on Thursday alleged: “Let Sujan Chakraborty, Suvendu Adhikari and Dilip Ghosh Ghosh, who have suddenly started speaking with high moral authority, take a look at themselves first and what they did in North Bengal. They pushed for favours (for jobs) at every possible level. I refused them help and told them I was only a minister and not the appointing authority. I refused to entertain their requests saying I can’t bend rules.”

“You should read the CAG report of 2009-10. Take a look at Suvendu’s activities in 2011-12, check out what he did at the DPSC levels,” Chatterjee blurted before the police whisked him away inside the courtroom.

All three leaders rubbished those charges as fictitious.

Minutes after those startling allegations from one of the prime accused in the recruitment scam, the Trinamul Congress took to social media platforms to justify Chatterjee’s remarks and even held a press conference to demand that the central agencies should also probe allegations of recruitment irregularities during the erstwhile Left Front rule in the state.

TMC spokesperson Krishanu Mitra posted on his Facebook page a purported government observation on a report from the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General which refers “to seven examinations conducted by the state School Service Commission in 2009-10 and concludes irregularities like marks manipulation, caste category manipulation, results manipulation like lower marks candidates getting priority in merit list or Personality Test as well as unfair selection for empanelment of ineligible candidates”, thereby pointing fingers at the previous left regime for corruption in recruitment.

The observation also referred to “unjustified expenditure of Rs 4.59 crore through private vendors during that period starting from 2009.”

In less than half an hour after Chatterjee made his allegations, TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh tweeted the former minister’s claims and demanded a probe against the three Opposition leaders. Ghosh followed this tweet by retweeting a post from the official TMC handle where he put up, what he claimed, was the joining letter of Mili Bhattacharya, wife of CPI-M leader Sujan Chakraborty, as a Group C staff at a south Kolkata college back in August, 1987. The party called this “job scam exposed” and claimed that the employee never cleared any exam to gain employment, worked for 34 years, retired and is currently enjoying her pension.

Addressing reporters shortly after, Ghosh dared the Left to publish a White Paper on the recruitments which took place during the earlier regime. “The ED and CBI must include the Left regime in their investigations and not single out the TMC rule period only. If our workers have made mistakes, our party will show no sympathy for them. But those who started this must not be left untouched,” Ghosh demanded.

“If you must read out a novel in public, then you should begin from its preface and not from a chapter in the middle,” he said.

Responding to the allegations made against his wife, Chakraborty said: “The TMC is only showing a joining letter of my wife. Is there any proof that she bypassed the norms to get that appointment? She followed every procedure to get her job as did others during the Left regime.”

Calling the Partha-Kunal allegations a result of a “weak script”, Suvendu Adhikari said: “The words of a prisoner have no value. I challenge them to show a shred of evidence of any one of the charges they are bringing against me. The conspiracy was hatched in a planned manner and will be clear if the Presidency jail superintendent and Kunal Ghosh are questioned. The mastermind of this conspiracy is Mamata Banerjee herself.”

Dilip Ghosh, on the other hand, questioned Chatterjee’s sanity after having stayed in prison for several months. “I joined active politics in 2015 and was nowhere in the political field before that. How could I have asked for favours?” he said.