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Kolkata, January 8 (IANS): West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, on Thursday expressed her anger over the raids by Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials at the office of vote-strategy agency India Political Action Committee (I-PAC) at Salt Lake on the northern outskirts of Kolkata since Thursday morning, as well as the residence of I-PAC's co-founder, Pratik Jain at Loudon Street in central Kolkata.
She also described the ED operations as the brainchild of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who she termed the “naughtiest and nastiest” home minister of the country.
On getting the news of simultaneous ED operations at two places, accompanied by the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) personnel, the Chief Minister and the Kolkata Police Commissioner, Manoj Kumar Verma, also reached Jain’s residence at Loudon Street on Thursday afternoon.
She went inside the residence and came out after a few minutes. She interacted with the media after coming out of Jain’s residence and lambasted the Union Home Minister and the ED over the development.
“The ED officials were trying to confiscate the documents of my party, Trinamool Congress. I have brought them back along with me. This useless Union Home Minister cannot protect the country. But he was trying to seize my party documents through the ED. I called up Pratik. The ED officials were trying to seize his mobile phone and hard discs. This Union Home Minister is the naughtiest and nastiest Home Minister of the country,” the Chief Minister said.
The Chief Minister also said that she will be going to I-PAC’s Salt Lake office where simultaneous ED raids are being conducted. To recall, I-PAC had been acting as the vote-strategy agency of Trinamool Congress since 2020, that is, the year before the last Assembly elections in West Bengal in 2021.
Reacting to the Chief Minister’s actions and speeches, the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, said that Mamata Banerjee was trying to directly interfere in the operations of a constitutional body.
“In the past, when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials went to the residence of the then Kolkata Police Commissioner and the current acting Director General of state Police, Rajeev Kumar, she tried to hinder that process and also staged a sit-in demonstration in the city against the CBI.
"Proper legal action should be taken against the Chief Minister as well. Why is she worried about the ED raid at the office of a private corporate entity?" Adhikari questioned.
