The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday criticised West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee over the alleged obstruction of Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids in Kolkata at the office of political consultancy agency I-PAC and the location of its director Pratik Jain, questioning the CM’s alleged links with the agency and claiming there became as soon as “a amount of suspicion” surrounding the episode.
Addressing a press convention in Unique Delhi, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad accused Banerjee of interfering with a central agency’s investigation. “The complete action of the CM shouldn’t be any longer only unethical, irresponsible and unconstitutional, but she has build the total democratic job and governance to shame,” Prasad acknowledged. He alleged that there must be “something sensitive implicating her and her birthday party” that she “snatched away” from Jain’s location, the save ED searches had been underway.
The ED on Thursday conducted searches at the I-PAC office in Salt Lake, Kolkata, in reference to an alleged coal rip-off-linked money laundering case. The agency alleged that Banerjee entered Jain’s location on Loudon Avenue all the method via the hunt operation and “took away key evidence”.
Banerjee, nonetheless, termed the ED action “politically motivated and unconstitutional”. “They’ve raided the location of our IT chief (Jain). They had been confiscating my birthday party’s paperwork and hard disks, which had necessary facets about our candidates for the assembly polls. I in actuality enjoy introduced those again,” she acknowledged.
Following the incident, both the ED and I-PAC approached the Calcutta high court docket. The ED alleged interference in its investigation, whereas I-PAC challenged the legality of the searches conducted at its office and Jain’s location.
On Friday, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs staged protests outside Union home minister Amit Shah’s office in Unique Delhi against the ED’s actions. Just a few birthday party leaders, at the side of MPs Derek O’Brien and Mahua Moitra, had been detained by Delhi Police. In West Bengal, Banerjee announced that she would rob to the streets to advise what she described because the BJP’s “blatant misuse of central agencies” and an “assault on democracy”.
