Saket Gokhale arrest: TMC to rake up ‘excesses’ by Central agencies in Winter Session

| Updated: 06 December, 2022 8:26 pm IST
Parliament of India (TNI Photo By Anand Singh)

On a day when their National Spokesperson Saket Gokhale was picked up by Gujarat Police for an alleged tweet against the Morbi accident, sources in Trinamool Congress told The New Indian the party would rake up the issue of use of central agencies against members of Opposition in the Parliament.

 “Discussions on federal structure is the most important at this point in our country. It was seen that since last few years central agencies are targeting the opposition parties and these issues need to be discussed broadly. We have mentioned that our voice have been suppressed which is dangerous for a democracy,” said a source in TMC.

Earlier Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee lashed out at the Central government for indulging in vindictive politics. “Saket made no mistake. Gujarat police arrested him because he tweeted against PM Modi. I condemn this vindictive attitude,” she said.

Narrating the turn of events that culminated in the arrest of Gokhale, party leader Derek O’Brien said that Gokhale was at the Rajasthan airport when he was picked up by Gujarat Police. “At 2 in the morning on Tuesday, he called his mother and told her that they are taking him to Ahmedabad and he would reach Ahmedabad by noon today. The police let him make that one two-minute phone call and then confiscated his phone and all his belongings.”

O’Brien alleged that a case had been cooked up by the Ahmedabad cyber cell about Saket’s tweet on the Morbi bridge collapse. “All this cannot silence the All India Trinamool Congress and the Opposition. BJP taking political vendetta to another level,” he added.

Gokhale had tweeted, “RTI reveals that Modi’s visit to Morbi for a few hours cost ₹30 cr. Of this, 5.5cr was purely for “welcome, event management, & photography”. 135 victims who died got 4 lac ex-gratia each i.e. 5cr. Just Modi’s event management & PR costs more than life of 135 people.””

On December 1, the Press Information Bureau shared a screenshot of Gokhale’s tweet and said, “This claim is fake” on its Twitter page.

The winter session will commence on December 7 and continue till December 29.

16 new bills, such as the Trade Marks (Amendment) Bill, 2022, and the Multi-State Cooperative Societies (Amendment) Bill, 2022, will be tabled.

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