NEW DELHI: Senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee will skip the first meeting of the INDIA bloc’s coordination committee to attend summons by the Enforcement Directorate in Kolkata on Wednesday.
Banerjee, who serves as the TMC general secretary, will answer the questions of ED officials regarding the alleged scam in the recruitment of junior teachers in West Bengal.
The scam made national headlines after ED sleuths recovered piles of cash and jewellery from the residence of former state education minister Partha Chatterjee’s close aide Arpita in Kolkata in June last year.
Chatterjee was arrested by the ED following a 20-hour-long questioning. Subsequently, his nail artist-turned-model-actor Arpita, Kunal Ghosh, Sanjoy Krishna were also arrested. The minister was later sacked by chief minister Mamata Banerjee from the Cabinet.
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Huge stash of cash and jewellery were seized from two apartments belonging to Arpita in posh localities of Kolkata, amounting to Rs 103.1 crores.
Prosecutors describe the alleged corruption as a “public education scam” where an elaborate network of touts and agents operated across the State, giving jobs at various levels in the state-run schools in return for money.
Meanwhile, no TMC leader will attend the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance)’s first meeting of the coordination committee meeting to be held at Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar at his residence in Delhi, sources confirmed to The New Indian.
TMC has communicated Abhishek’s inability to attend the meeting in advance to Congress general secretary (organization) KC Venugopal, who holds a key role in the committee. The Congress leader told Abhishek to handle the ED summons first.
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The meeting is expected to draw a blueprint of plans to hold joint rallies in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
BJP’s Dilip Gosh told The New Indian that the party is eagerly waiting for the final result of the ED investigation.
On Tuesday, actor and Trinamool MP Nusrat Jahan was summoned by the ED following a case in which flats were falsely promised to senior citizens under affordable prices that now emerged as a suspicious financial entity amounting to crores of rupees.