Mamata meets Sonia amid rebellion in Trinamool Congress
KOLKATA/NEW DELHI, June 9: The West Bengal CID on Tuesday launched simultaneous searches at Trinamool Congress’s central office at party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence and at national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s Camac Street office in the city, probing alleged forged signatures of TMC MLAs that triggered a party split.
The agency officers maintained that the raids were held to dredge out the original copy of TMC’s meeting resolution book and attendance sheet containing signatures of 70 MLAs present at the May 6 meeting held the party office adjacent to former chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s residence.
Both Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek were out of town, at the national capital for their scheduled meetings with leaders of the opposition INDIA bloc.
According to the CID, Abhishek Banerjee, based on the said resolution, had first intimated the Speaker of the Bengal assembly, on May 9, that the party had chosen Sobhabdeb Chattopadhyay as the assembly’s Leader of Opposition, Asima Patra and Nayna Bandyopadhyay as deputy LoPs and Firhad Hakim as the chief whip.Agency officers said that Abhishek followed up the intimation with a written communication to the Speaker on May 20, where he enclosed a copy of the meeting resolution book and the attendance sheet, reiterating the party’s endorsement for the assembly posts.
Two expelled TMC legislators ?” Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha ?” had lodged a complaint before Speaker Rathindra Bose that “no resolution was adopted about the selection of LoP” in the party’s May 6 meeting, and that the duo had signed the meeting resolution book on a later date on May 19.
The MLAs alleged that the May 6 resolution was “manufactured and fabricated” and stated that as many as 14 of the 70 signatures were in “block letters”.
Tuesday’s raids for the said documents were conducted in the wake of Abhishek Banerjee skipping three back-to-back appearance notices issued by the CID for questioning where the agency asked the leader to carry the original documents for necessary forensic examination, sources said.
Agency officials, accompanied by personnel from the Kalighat police station and a large contingent of women police personnel, arrived at the party’s central office.
Abhishek was summoned for the third time by the CID to appear before it in connection with the case by 5 pm on Tuesday, after he avoided appearance on two earlier occasions?” on June 1 and June 8.
While the search operations at the Harish Chatterjee Street premises lasted for about two hours, the one at Camac Street went on for three, with no significant seizures made by the agency from either of the two premises, an officer said.
As soon as the news of the raids spread, senior TMC leaders and MLAs Kunal Ghosh and Madan Mitra reached the residence of the party supremo but were not allowed to enter the premises.
The BJP and West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari are trying to harass the TMC supremo, the party MP alleged.
Meanwhile,Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday met senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi at her 10, Janpath residence and discussed ways to further strengthen the alliance.
Sources said the two leaders are learnt to have discussed the strategy between the two parties going forward after the opposition bloc meeting, and following an exodus of Trinamool MPs after the party’s defeat to the BJP in the recent West Bengal polls.While both the parties did not disclose details of the meeting, the sources said Banerjee is learnt to have stressed on opposition unity, and asserted that the INDIA bloc should work together in taking on the BJP on various issues, including those concerning the public. (PTI)
