Partha Chatterjee has luxury flat just for dogs: Meenakshi Lekhi after ED raids

Union minister Meenakashi Lekhi on Thursday claimed that West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee, arrested in the SSC scam case, owns a luxury flat in Kolkata just to keep his dogs. She also questioned West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's silence over the entire issue.

'Those who spoke of Maa, Maati, Manush only care about money, money, money… Piles of cash were recovered but chief minister Mamata Banerjee is silent," Lekhi said at a press conference at BJP headquarters in New Delhi.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has recovered ₹27.9 crore in cash, besides a huge amount of gold jewellery from an apartment linked to Arpita Mukherjee, considered a close associate of arrested Chatterjee.

The stacks of cash were recovered from the apartment in Belgharia on Wednesday, and after overnight counting, it amounted to ₹27.90 crore.

“Monalisa Das, another acquaintance of Partha Chatterjee, who was admitted to a university in 2014, is today a professor there and the head of department of Bengali. She has 10 flat papers in his name… One of them is a super luxury flat where Partha Chatterjee keeps only his pet dogs, ” Lekhi said.

"Arpita Mukherjee's two statements have come. She said Partha Chatterjee had used her house an ATM. Arpita said the money used to go from the bottom to the top. It is understood who is the lower one, but who is the upper one, it should also come to the fore," she added.

The investigators are still ascertaining the value of the gold jewellery, believed to be in kgs. The money and gold were found five days after the agency seized more than ₹21 crore in cash, besides jewellery and foreign exchange from another flat of Mukherjee in south Kolkata's Tollygunge area, following which she was arrested.

In all, nearly ₹50 crore in cash has been seized so far.

Earlier in the day, TMC state general secretary and party spokesman Kunal Ghosh tweeted his advice to the party, saying Chatterjee should be expelled from the party and removed from the ministry.

“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,” Kunal Ghosh said in a post on Twitter. He later deleted the post, saying TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee had convened a meeting to discuss the issue. “So, as @AITCofficial has taken up the matter, I am deleting the personal one,” he said.

Biswajit Deb, TMC legislator and spokesperson also backed Ghosh’s call.