While admitting the grim fact that a stock of over Rs 20to crore is normal for a political bigwig in corrupt India, the seizure of such a huge stock from a close associate of West Bengal Industries and Commerce Minister Partha Chatterjee has come as a major embarrassment to the ruling Trinamool Congress and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. For a change, Banerjee was at a loss for words, signifying an admission of guilt. The TMC is hemming and hawing simply for the “sake of it.” The cash stock has wider ramifications. That Partha Chatterjee previously handled the education ministry and the central Enforcement Directorate reached up to the apartment as part of a probe into complaints of a huge teacher appointment scam in government schools denoted a direct link. Chatterjee is also the general secretary of the Trinamool Congress.
To allege that the Enforcement Directorate is out to kill the Trinamool Congress — the reigning political establishment — through multiple means is only to state the obvious. Also, political parties cannot do without huge funds. The BJP itself circulates tonnes of money during elections across states. Yet, being the ruling party at the Centre, it can manage such transactions without being caught by the law-enforcing agencies. The Congress party did so when it was in power at the Centre. It has less funds now. Elections are, by now, an exercise in money-based manipulations. In the North-East, it had been so all along.
However, the issue here is of a more serious, rather inflammatory, nature. This is why the TMC is finding itself speechless. The source of this stock is directly linked to the teacher appointment scam as per records with the investigating agencies. In other words, this was the money that the educated youths in Bengal were forced to pay as bribes to get a school teacher’s job or other jobs. Or, this was a collective of other ill-gotten funds. It is clear as sunlight that both small-time actor Arpita and Chatterjee have no personal income to keep so much money through normal means. The long and short of this surmise is that the minister or TMC is engaged in corruption. Note also the fact that chief minister Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek and his wife are under ED lens in the multi-crore coal scam case; another bombshell. BJP says this now is the tip of the iceberg and a trailer for the unfolding of bigger shocks. However, targeting political rivals will alone not help achieve the wider goal of checking corruption in this country.
