Kolkata: Bengal Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee issuing summons to ED and CBI officials for filing charge sheets against the Members of the State Assembly without taking him into confidence is seen as a “counter offensive” strategy on the part of the Trinamool Congress in the wake of Enforcement Directorate issuing fresh summons to TMC national general secretary and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee in the multi-crore coal scam and related money laundering case.
The two central agencies were likely to get the letters of summons by Monday, Speaker’s office said adding the officials concerned have been asked to explain their conduct and appear before him by the third week of September.
Though the purported context of the Speaker’s letter could be the charge sheets against the TMC leaders and Ministers Firhad Hakim, Subroto Mukherjee and others in the Narada chit fund case the immediate trigger for the Speaker’s action could be the summons issued to Abhishek Banerjee who was already grilled for 9 hours at the ED office in Delhi last week.
A second summons for appearance was however skipped by the TMC MP. Consequently he has been issued fresh summons by the Agency asking him to appear before its officials in Delhi by September 21, TMC sources said adding “it is a clear case of political vendetta.” Chief Minister herself said that “the BJP is taking revenge on our men including my family members after failing to defeat me politically in the Assembly elections.”
ED officials earlier said that the TMC MP had circumvented many questions and had failed to explain the sources of a few crore of rupees that had accumulated in two companies owned by the Banerjees.
While there was no reports on whether the junior Banerjee would appear before ED on the stipulated date sources said he could ask for some more time like his wife Rujira who had also been summoned by the Agencies and failed to appear before it.
