West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has mounted pressure on Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the opposition in the assembly, by initiating probes on several fronts.
While the state government is probing the operations of several cooperative banks in which Adhikari is a member of the managing boards, the state criminal investigation department (CID) has started an investigation into the death of one of his bodyguards.
Adhikari, who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in December last year and defeated Mamata Banerjee at East Midnapore district’s Nandigram assembly seat, got some relief on Friday when the Calcutta high court ordered that there is no need for a special audit of the accounts of the district’s Contai Co-operative Bank Ltd of which Adhikari is the chairman since 2009.
The special audit was recently ordered by the state government. The bank moved court, challenging it.
Soon after Adhikari joined the BJP, ruling party leaders demanded an audit of the bank’s accounts and alleged that he was involved in corruption. On Friday, Justice Sampa Sarkar observed that there is no need for a special audit right now since the bank has sent audit reports to the government.
A senior state government official, who did not want to be named, said that in June the administration started the process of removing Adhikari from the boards of several cooperative banks located in East Midnapore.
{{/usCountry}}A senior state government official, who did not want to be named, said that in June the administration started the process of removing Adhikari from the boards of several cooperative banks located in East Midnapore.
{{/usCountry}}Fisheries minister and senior TMC leader in East Midnapore, Akhil Giri said, “If the leader of the opposition wants to criticize the state government, he should do it after relinquishing the posts he holds in these banks.”
TMC has alleged that Adhikari violated the law by getting elected as chairman of the board of the Contai Co-operative Bank four times in a row. He is also chairman of the Vidyasagar Central Co-operative Bank.
Meanwhile, the CID has started a probe into the death of Adhikari’s bodyguard Shubhabrata Chakraborty who died from a gunshot injury in 2018. His family has now alleged foul play. The complaint has been filed by Suparna Kanjilal Chakraborty, the wife of the deceased.
A CID team visited Adhikari’s residence on Friday and Saturday. They talked to the members of the family, including Dibyendu Adhikari, the BJP leader’s bother who is also the TMC Lok Sabha member from the district’s Tamluk Lok Sabha seat. Their father, Sisir Adhikari, is the TMC Lok Sabha member from Contai.
The TMC had moved Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla seeking Sisir Adhikari’s disqualification under anti-defection law as he shared the dais with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the recent election campaign. The speaker served a notice on Adhikari earlier this week.
Suvendu Adhikari could not be contacted.
Samik Bhattacharya, chief spokesperson of the Bengal BJP, said, “When you are in the TMC you are god but if you are in another party you become a demon. The ruling party has turned itself into a laughing stock. This is vindictive politics.”
These are not the only probes initiated by the state.
In June, the Kolkata Police arrested an old associate of Suvendu Adhikari in a job scam case. Also, he and his youngest brother Soumendu Adhikari were booked in a case involving theft of relief materials in East Midnapore, the home turf of the Adhikari family.
This is the first time since the BJP emerged as a formidable force in Bengal and took the TMC head on in the 2019 Lok Sabha and the recent assembly polls that a prominent saffron camp leader has been booked in a criminal case.
In both polls – the BJP wrested 18 of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats but bagged only 77 of 294 assembly seats in May– it was BJP that highlighted the alleged involvement of TMC leaders in chit fund scams and the Narada sting operation case during the campaign.
The BJP became a target of the TMC on May 17 when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested three TMC legislators, including two cabinet ministers, Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim, and the former mayor of Kolkata Sovan Chatterjee, who left the TMC last year, in connection with the 2016 Narada sting operation case. TMC leaders accused the BJP of using the CBI to avenge its electoral defeat.