Sack Partha Chatterjee from cabinet, expel him, TMC leader demands

West Bengals industry minister Partha Chatterjee, arrested in the SSC scam, should be removed immediately from his post and expelled from the Trinamool Congress, the partys state general secretary Kunal Ghosh demanded on Thursday.

Nearly Rs 50 crore in cash, and gold believed to be in kilograms were recovered from apartments linked to Chatterjee, besides documents of properties and foreign exchange, as per officials of the Enforcement Directorate which arrested him.

“Partha Chatterjee should be removed from ministry and all party posts immediately. He should be expelled. If this statement considered wrong, party has every right to remove me from all posts. I shall continue as a soldier of @AITCofficial (TMC),” Ghosh, also the partys spokesperson, tweeted.

Later, he said that he has full faith in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.

“I think they will take the appropriate decision,” he said.

Ghoshs comment came amid the opposition BJP and CPI(M)s attack on the TMC government in the state for not taking any action against Chatterjee even as huge amounts of cash were recovered.

However, the chief minister has said that if someone is found guilty, she would not spare that person even if he is a minister.

Chatterjee, a powerful minister in the Mamata Banerjee government and the secretary-general of Trinamool Congress, was arrested on Saturday in the SSC scam.

The CBI, as directed by the Calcutta High Court, is probing the alleged irregularities in the recruitment of Group-C and D staff as well as teachers in government-sponsored and aided schools on recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC). The ED is tracking the money trail in the scam.

Chatterjee was the education minister when the alleged irregularities took place.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)