The Trinamool Congress today carried out a two-pronged attack on the BJP alleging “misuse of Central agencies” to hamper the party’s campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.
In Kolkata, party general secretary Kunal Ghosh alleged that two BJP leaders had met National Intelligence Agency (NIA) officers and had handed over a list of Trinamool Congress leaders who would be arrested, while a party delegation visited the Election Commission office in Delhi to allege that the BJP-ruled Centre was misusing the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of India for its political ends.
Ghosh alleged that the two BJP candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal had met an NIA SP, D.R. Singh at his New Town residence, to “plan whom to arrest”. He further alleged that another BJP leader had met the NIA officials at its Nizam Palace office and had handed over a list of Trinamool leaders to be arrested.
The party said that in New Delhi, a five-member team had gone to meet the Election Commissioners to complain that the BJP was using Central agencies to hamper the party’s campaign. The delegation comprised Rajya Sabha MPs Derek O’Brien, Dola Sen, Sagarika Ghosh and Saket Gokhale and State Minister Shashi Panja.
Shashi Panja told media afterwards: “After the arrest of Hemant Soren, former CM of Jharkhand, and CM of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, the Central investigative agencies like the CBI and the ED and Income Tax have been gunning for our MP candidate Mahua Moitra, our MLA and Cabinet Minister Chandranath Sinha, and our Councillor Jui Biswas. This is totally unacceptable.”
“We want to tell the Chief Election Commissioner and the Election Commissioners, we urge them to use the power vested in them by the Constitution to stop this selective targeting of Opposition leaders right ahead of the LS elections,” she added.
“We are disturbed the way Hemant Soren was arrested just before the MCC was announced. Now the MCC has been announced, the ECI is in control, but the Delhi Chief Minister is behind the bars. This is the attitude on display. We are requesting the ECI to use powers at their disposal,” Panja said.
“Central agencies like ED, CBI and NIA are gunning at the Opposition leaders. They are being used as a weapon against the Opposition. We had sought time to raise our concerns, and we have been given an appointment for Monday,” Panja said.
Sources said that the NIA had summoned three Trinamool Congress workers — Subir Maity, Naba Kumar Panda and Manab Kumar Parua — and the officer-in-charge of Bhupatinagar Police Station at its office here on March 28, over the 2022 Bhupatinagar blast in East Midnapore in which three people died. However, all of them skipped the NIA summons.
Yesterday, Kunal Ghosh had posted on X: “Sensing defeat in East Midnapore some TMC workers have been summoned by the NIA.It has been orchestrated by a traitor. OC has been under pressure to ensure that those who are summoned go to the NIA office for probe. The BJP workers are trying to intimidate our party workers from that area. Our workers will not comply with the summon but will fight it in court.”