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‘Following Kejriwal’s footsteps’: BJP on Mamata Banerjee’s dharna
Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned Kolkata Police Commissioner’s presence at the site where West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is protesting against the Centre’s alleged high-handedness in dealing with Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar.
Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned Kolkata Police commissioner’s presence at the site where West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is protesting against the Centre’s alleged high-handedness in dealing with Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar.
Mamata Banerjee is on a “satyagraha” after a showdown on Sunday when a CBI team reached Rajeev Kumar’s house to question him over the Saradha scam. In retaliation, Kolkata Police also sent its teams to the CBI offices in the city and the residence of CBI’s West Bengal unit chief Pankaj Srivastava.
“What is happening? A police commissioner is sitting on a dharna with politicians? What does it mean? By sitting on a dharna, West Bengal chief minister is following the footsteps of Arvind Kejriwal,” the Union law minister said during a press conference.
“The total suspicious circumstances surrounding this (situation) proves that this police commissioner knows a lot and therefore he has to be saved,” he said. He pointed out that it was not the BJP government that started probing the Narada and Sarada scams in West Bengal.
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“In 2014, the Congress tweeted Rahul Gandhi’s statement that 20 lakh people lost their money in the chit fund scam in West Bengal. We took oath on May 26, 2014, so all these inquiries in Narada and Saradha scams started before us,” he said.
The Supreme Court had directed the central agency in May 2014 to investigate Saradha chit fund scam that duped millions of depositors spread across states spanning from Odisha and Jharkhand to Assam and Tripura.
Ravi Shankar Prasad also accused Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress party of throttling democracy in West Bengal and said the opposition is not allowed to put across its point in the state. Mamata Banerjee did not speak against her party’s leaders like Tapan Ghosh and Kunal Bose, the Union minister said.
Madan Mitra, sports and transport minister and a confidante of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, was arrested on December 12, 2014. He got bail on September 10, 2016, after spending 21 months in jail. Other party functionaries to be jailed were Rajya Sabha MP Srinjoy Bose and vice-president Rajat Majumdar.
High profile leaders who were subjected to grilling included party number two Mukul Roy. After the grilling on January 31, 2015, Roy’s relations with Mamata Banerjee suffered and he later joined the BJP.
