Partha Chatterjee’s arrest in job scam triggers differences within Trinamool

Barely 24 hours after West Bengal’s industry minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) secretary general Partha Chatterjee was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the school teacher recruitment scam, his party on Sunday adopted a tougher stand and demanded a time-bound investigation, something no party has done in recent history.

“No leader, no matter how highly placed, will be spared by the party and the government if found guilty by law. The arrest has helped the opposition indulge in kite flying. This will continue if the probe goes on indefinitely. We demand a quick, time-bound probe,” TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said on Sunday.

This triggered reactions in political circles with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleging that having sensed trouble, the TMC is disowning Chatterjee.

“The TMC disowned Ghosh after he was arrested in the Saradha chit fund case by the state police and sent to jail custody when he was a Rajya Sabha member. At that time (2013), it was Chatterjee who got Ghosh suspended from the TMC. History is repeating itself,” said BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar.

The ED on Sunday filed a petition before the Calcutta high court seeking Chatterjee’s custody who was allowed by the city’s Bankshall court to be admitted at the state-run SSKM hospital on Saturday as his lawyer’s claimed that he was unwell.

Acting on the ED’s petition, the single-judge bench of Justice Bibek Chaudhuri ordered on Sunday night that Chatterjee must be taken to AIIMS, Bhubaneswar on Monday morning in an air ambulance for a medical check-up and flown back for court production the same day.

“AIIMS, Bhubaneswar authority is directed to medically examine the accused by a team of specialist doctors of cardiology, nephrology, respiratory medicines and endocrinology,” said the court order, adding that a medical report must be handed to the ED’s investigation officer by 3 pm so that Chatterjee can be flown back and produced before the special ED court in Kolkata on Monday.

On Saturday, Ghosh and three ministers known to be close confidants of Mamata Banerjee held a press conference to say that TMC will take action against Chatterjee only if he is found guilty in court. This means that he will continue as minister and hold party portfolios.

“I tried to call the chief minster thrice but failed,” Chatterjee told the media on Saturday while he was being taken to court.

Firhad Hakim, one of the ministers who addressed the press conference said: “How can someone call up the chief minister? The ED takes away all phones during a raid.”

TMC insiders said Mamata Banerjee was anticipating some kind of action by either the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which was originally asked by the Calcutta high court to probe the 2018 teacher recruitment scam, or the ED which started a parallel probe into the alleged money laundering.

Banerjee voiced her concern during her speech at the TMC’s annual mega rally in Kolkata on July 21, a day before the ED raided Chatterjee’s home.

“We work for the people and sometimes mistakes happen. If someone has done anything wrong, he will be punished,” Banerjee said before almost half a million TMC workers.

Chatterjee was arrested on Saturday hours after the ED seized ₹21.90 crore in Indian currency, jewellery valued at around ₹70 lakh, foreign currency and documents relating to several properties and businesses from the south Kolkata apartment of Arpita Mukherjee, a model and actress who the agency described as Chatterjee’s close aide.

Since the designated ED court was closed during the weekend, Mukherjee was produced at the Bankshall court on Sunday and remanded in ED’s custody for a day with the rider that she has to be questioned in the presence of a lawyer. She will be produced before the ED court on Monday.

The car in which the ED was taking her back to its office met with a minor accident on Sunday evening. Nobody suffered any injury, ED officials said.

“I do not belong to any political party. I have faith in the judiciary. I hope the law will take its own course. I request the state government to take care of my mother,” Mukherjee told the media when she was being taken to court.

TMC leaders said developments in the ED’s probe led to differences in opinion over the stand to be taken on Chatterjee.

To start with, the ownership documents of Mukherjee’s apartment was reportedly found from Chatterjee’s residence at Naktala in south Kolkata when he was interrogated for more than 12 hours on Friday.

The minister was arrested in the early hours on Saturday after the raid at Mukherjee’s apartment yielded the cash. ED officials said she did not disclose its source even as investigation indicated that she owns several properties and businesses. The ED also found evidence of a large number of properties in Birbhum and East Midnapore districts.

Adding to the TMC’s trouble, the BJP circulated a video showing Mamata Banerjee at a public event alongside Partha Chatterjee and Arpita Mukherjee. The video was claimed to have been shot in 2019 during the inauguration of the Durga puja held by Naktala Udayan Sangha of which Chatterjee is the principal patron.

The TMC did not question the authenticity of the video but said a lot of people gather at such events. Mukherjee, who played small roles in Bengali, Odiya and some Tamil movies, was made the model for the puja’s theme.

The role of Kunal Ghosh came under focus during the weekend.

Ghosh, a journalist-turned-politician, somehow accessed his social media account within hours of his arrest in 2013 and named 12 people, including Mamata Banerjee and four TMC MPs, as people who could help the police unravel the Saradha scam. His post and the subsequent statements he made became weapons for the opposition.

After being released on bail following a two-year jail custody, Ghosh subsequently made a comeback and was made a state general secretary last year. The CBI has not yet filed its charge sheet in the Saradha case in which leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, who joined the BJP in 2020, is also an accused.

“The TMC got large portions of the money Chatterjee had been collecting as bribe from job seekers,” Adhikari alleged.

“The chief minister is directly involved in the scam. She cannot escape,” said CPI (M) Rajya Sabha member and lawyer Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, who is representing hundreds of candidates who were deprived of jobs in state-run schools despite being qualified.

“The party has no connection with the woman whose apartment was raided and the money recovered from there. She is not a party member,” Ghosh said.