Crisis deepens for TMC as more leaders face heat over corruption charges

The crisis in the Trinamool Congress has further deepened with more of its leaders facing heat over graft charges and some of its functionaries, including an MLA, encountering mob fury for allegedly taking bribes.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) served summons to the TMC Birbhum district president Anubrata Mandal in connection with a cattle-smuggling case on Tuesday.

He has been asked to appear at the agency’s office at Nizam Palace in Kolkata at 11 am on Wednesday.

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This is the 10th time the CBI summoned the TMC’s Birbhum strongman for questioning in the smuggling case.

The last summon was issued to him on August 5 to appear before the investigating agency on August 8. But Mandal skipped the appearance citing ill health.

Soon after issuing the summon to the TMC leader, the CBI additional director Ajay Bhatnagar, who had earlier reached Kolkata, went into a huddle with other officials of the agency to discuss their future move if Mandal skip the appearance again, sources said.

The investigating agency has decided to take stern step if Mandal does not turn up again, the CBI sources further added.

The questioning of Mandal in the case is important as the investigators got hold of property documents worth several crores of rupees linked to him and his family members, according to the CBI sources.

The agency on Monday submitted to the court 49 property deeds. Many of these documents are in the name of Mandal and his family members, the sources claim.

In the supplementary chargesheet, the CBI filed on Monday also have names of Mandal’s bodyguard Sehgal Hossain and a close aide Abdul Latif.

TMC’s youth leader Bikash Mishra has also been named in the chargesheet in connection with the case involving cross-border cattle smuggling from India via West Bengal to Bangladesh.

The crime, according to the CBI, had been thriving due to a nexus between customs and BSF officials, smugglers and politicians.

The party riddled with corruption charges received another blow when the Calcutta high court on Monday directed to make the Enforcement Directorate (ED) a party to a public interest litigation (PIL) that seeks a probe into the astonishing rise of assets of 19 TMC leaders, including seven ministers.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava told the petitioner Biplab Roy Chowdhury to make the ED a respondent in the case effectively allowing the agency to investigate the alleged disproportionate assets.

The first hearing in the PIL, filed in 2017, was held on Monday.

Among those accused in the PIL of amassing disproportionate assets are assembly speaker Biman Banerjee, state municipal affairs minister and Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim, education minister Bratya Basu, forest minister Jyotipriyo Mullick, law minister Maloy Ghatak, cooperation minister Arup Roy, disaster management minister Javed Ahmed Khan and minister of state for panchayat affairs Seuli Saha.

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Names of two deceased TMC leaders Subrata Mukherjee and Sadhan Pandey too figured in the list.

An ED probe into the assets of the accused TMC leaders would be the last thing the party would want at this juncture when its image took a beating after one of its senior leaders and minister Partha Chatterjee was arrested by the ED in a teacher recruitment scam.

The images of cash amounting around ₹50 crore seized by the ED from flats of a female friend of the minister and unearthing of several properties allegedly linked to the former minister galvanized the opposition and also fuelled public anger.

A local TMC leader’s son and wife were beaten up by job seekers in East Midnapore district’s Bhagabanpur area on Saturday.

They accused the leader Shivshankar Naik of embezzling lakhs of money from several people in the name of giving them government jobs.

An angry mob vandalised Naik’s house. Not finding him in the house, the angry mob tied his son to a tree and thrashed him. Naik’s wife was also beaten up.

In another incident, a group of TMC workers vandalised the house and vehicle of party MLA Idris Ali in Murshidabad district, accusing him of taking money for allotting posts in the party’s local organisations.

Ali, however, denied the allegations. In a letter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the MLA accused another TMC leader Mostafa Sheikh of orchestrating the attack as he (the MLA) had asked him to deposit the extorted money.

The allegations and counter allegations only add to the TMC’s problem.