The Calcutta high court on Monday directed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to furnish details of all bank accounts of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and questioned a lower court’s recent order that forbade the party from accessing those accounts, lawyers who attended the hearing said.
The single bench of Justice Krishna Rao reserved its order after hearing a petition filed by TMC Rajya Sabha member Dola Sen, a Mamata Banerjee loyalist and critic of the Ritabrata Banerjee-led rebel faction recognised by the speaker of the Bharatiya Janata Party-dominated Bengal assembly as the official opposition.
“During the hearing on Sen’s petition seeking permission to access eight bank accounts frozen by ED on July 7, additional solicitor general S V Raju, who appeared for the federal agency, cited a recent order of the Alipore civil court which said the Mamata Banerjee-led faction cannot use any bank account or the party office and ordered a status quo till August 6,” a lawyer who attended the hearing said.
“Countering this, senior counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi told the court on behalf of the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC that the Alipore Court passed an ex-parte order and his client did not even receive a hearing notice. Singhvi also stated that only the Election Commission of India can declare which faction represents the real TMC,” the lawyer added.
“Justice Rao asked if a civil court can play the role of ECI and refused to hear the lawyer representing the Ritabrata Banerjee-led faction,” the lawyer said.
Monday’s development occurred days after the single bench of Justice Saugata Bhattacharya ruled on July 9 that the Mamata Banerjee-led faction could use three bank accounts frozen by the state police in June only for day-to-day expenses and legal expenditures but under the supervision of a retired high court judge.
The court appointed retired judge Subrata Talukdar as special officer till September 30 to supervise the use of these accounts.
However, the ED froze approximately ₹440 crore currently in those three accounts as part of its ongoing probe into the alleged laundering of around ₹160 crore from the party’s funds through Carewell Aviation, a Kolkata-based company to allegedly buy two aircrafts.
On July 10, TMC legislator and Mamata Banerjee loyalist Kunal Ghosh alleged that at least four more bank accounts were frozen that day.