Calcutta: The Kolkata Supreme Court has ordered the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to take sides in the disproportionate assets case of 19 Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders who are said to have amassed vast wealth disproportionate to their income. The verdict was announced Monday following a public interest court case filed against the misleading TMC leaders.
It should be recalled that this order is a second setback for the TMC in the last two weeks after Partha Chatterjee – number two in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet – was caught in the act with almost Rs 51 crore in cash and jewelry from his home was close confidante. He now languishes in a city jail.
On Monday, the divisional bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajyashree Bhardwaj announced the verdict, saying that the Enforcement Authority should be involved in the case from now on. The ruling effectively opens an ED investigation into the disproportionate assets of these 19 TMC leaders
Interestingly, all of the leaders and their spouses, many of whom are housewives, had declared their occupation as social workers in the various affidavits filed in court and before the State Electoral Commission. However, after becoming an MLA and Minister, their personal income has each increased by more than 100%.
Political observers have cited the case of Partha Chatterjee, who reported his declared income as a few crores, but his undeclared income turned out to be in excess of a few hundred crores.
Prominent among those whose names appear on the list include the state’s current Minister for Urban Development, Firhaad Hakim, the current Speaker of the Assembly, Arup Roy, the late Ministers Sadhan Pande and Subrata Mukherjee, the former Minister of Finance, among other prominent names Amit Mitra.
Sabyasachi Chatterjee, who acted as counsel on behalf of the public interest litigants, said: “Many of those whose names appear on the list were lawyers; However, none of them went to court to practice after being assigned ministerial posts. Then how come her income has increased so much?”
This High Court ruling has alarmed TMC leadership. At first, party circles declined to comment on the issue, but later TMC leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy claimed that only the TMC was singled out: “Why wasn’t there an investigation against the Congress, the BJP or the Samajwadi Party ?”
The case on which this judgment was rendered began in 2017 on the basis of the alleged increase in disproportionate assets of TMC MLAs and ministers between 2011 and 2016.
The litigants in the case are Biplab Choudhury and Anindyasundar Das. Shamim Ahmad, who was also counsel for litigants in the case, said that amount had increased many times after 2017, so the additions would be brought to court through a new affidavit.
