Kolkata: At a time when two Trianmool Congress (TMC) Members of Parliament — Tapas Pal and Sudip Banerjee — have been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the Rose Valley chit-fund scam, names of three more party leaders, including two senior ministers of the Mamata Banerjee government have surfaced.
“We have been examining this case for the last one-and-a-half year and have enough evidence against many high profile people and they will be summoned very soon,” said a senior officer of the CBI.
The Enforcement Doirectorate (ED) which has been examining the money trail has recovered a dairy from a secret safe of Gautam Kundu, owner of Rose Valley, where he has mentioned the names of the individuals and the amount of money paid to them.
“The dairy was in a locker and no one writes these with the intention of investigating agencies to look into. It contains names of politicians, ministers, actors, their husbands and even a popular Bollywood singer,” said a senior CBI official.
The TMC has however termed this a political vendetta by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the party. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party should remove Modi and replace him with anyone else.
“Modi must be removed as he is creating a police state. The BJP has the majority in parliament. They can replace the prime minister with Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh or even veteran leader LK Advani. But Modi as PM is unacceptable,” Mamata said, lashing out at the prime minister for attacking her party members.
Other TMC leaders also backed Banerjee stating that the arrest of the two MPs is a political fight that needs to be fought politically. “This is a political fight and it has to be fought politically. The arrests are well-timed as we have opposed the anti-people moves of the prime minister. Since our leader (Banerjee) is opposing him he is using the CBI as a tool against us,” said state minister and veteran politician Subrata Mukherjee.
These statements come at a time when BJP is holding its national executive meet in Delhi ahead of the crucial elections in five states — Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa, and Manipur — starting early next month.
“Her [Mamata’s] ploy is to try and create a rift within the BJP and try to absolve her party of its sins of looting poor people. However, the law will take its own course,” said state BJP party president Dilip Ghosh.
