• ED officials interrogating me to please political masters: TMC's Abhishek Banerjee in Calcutta
• BJP wants to stop TMC from playing its role in INDIA bloc: Abhishek
  

Trinamul Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee was on Wednesday questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officers for over nine hours in connection with its probe into the alleged school jobs scam in West Bengal, officials said.

Banerjee, the party's national general secretary, was questioned by the agency officials from 11.30am to 8.40pm, they said.

"Banerjee was called to provide evidence in connection with the school recruitment irregularities," an ED official told PTI.

The Diamond Harbour MP skipped the coordination committee meeting of the opposition bloc INDIA in Delhi as he appeared before the agency sleuths.

Elaborating on the questioning, the ED official said three of his colleagues questioned Banerjee on his role and association with ‘Leaps and Bounds,’ the company allegedly involved in the scam.

"Banerjee was asked about his association with the company and whether he was still holding the position of the director," he said.

Asked whether Banerjee cooperated with the ED sleuths, the officer replied in the affirmative.

Banerjee had on Tuesday filed a supplementary affidavit before the Calcutta High Court, claiming that a fresh summons issued to him by the ED, when his revisional application challenging earlier summons by the agency is pending, is "bad in law".

Stating that the TMC MP has been summoned on Wednesday "to give evidence", the affidavit said Banerjee has not only challenged the entire investigation qua (in the capacity of) him, but also the previous summons issued to him by the agency, in a revisional application filed by him before the high court.

Banerjee alleged in the supplementary affidavit that the ED has "initiated and embarked upon a fishing and roving inquiry to rope in the petitioner into the domain of the alleged teacher recruitment scam".