After spending 45 minutes at the I-PAC office in the Kolkata suburb of Salt Lake that the Enforcement Directorate raided on Thursday morning, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to control Union home minister Amit Shah.

“Amit Shah, if you want to win Bengal, fight politically, contest the polls. What is this? Why did you carry out a raid in the office of our party’s IT cell? Why did you allow an app that lacks credibility to delete the names of 58 lakh voters in Bengal?” Mamata asked, addressing the media.

“If you go on like this, I am sorry to say, Mr Amit Shah, you will get zero seats in Bengal. Mr prime minister, please control your home minister,” she said.

Earlier in the day, she had described Shah as a “nasty home minister.”

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The chief minister said she would stay put at the I-PAC office till the organisation’s head, Pratik Jain, whose Loudon street residence too was raided by the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday morning, arrived.

While the raids were on at Jain’s office and home, Mamata had reached Jain’s residence from where she exited within a few minutes with a green file.

“They were here to seize all files related to my party. Amit Shah has sent the ED to collect data on the possible candidates of my party in the forthcoming Assembly polls,” the chief minister fumed.

Her next destination was the Salt Lake Sector V office where she spent nearly 45 minutes.

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“I-PAC is not a private organisation. It is authorised by the Trinamool Congress to work on its behalf. We are a registered political party. We file income tax. We have elected representatives. We are audited. Why are no notices ever served to the BJP? They use money power, muscle power and are the killer of democracy,” Mamata said.

In the volatile political atmosphere of Bengal, already made even more volatile by the Election Commission’s ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the latest raid by the EC at the office of I-PAC and Jain’s residence is being seen as a direct attack on the Trinamool and Mamata.

The raid comes at a time when the state is preparing for the Assembly election that could be held in April-May this year.

Mamata accused the ED team of taking away documents that contained details of the Trinamool’s likely candidates, poll and campaign strategy.

“With the forensic team, they took away everything. The desks are empty. By the time we can re-draw every strategy, elections will be over. Was this the right thing to do?” Mamata asked. “If they can raid our IT cell, they can raid any IT cell.”

The visit to Loudon street was unannounced. By the time Mamata reached Sector V, reinforcements had arrived in the form of Bidhannagar mayor Krishna Chakraborty and state fire services minister Sujit Bose, who were later joined by Bengal’s director-general of police Rajeev Kumar and Bidhannagar municipal corporation chairman Sabyasachi Datta.

During her stay, security personnel were seen taking out a large number of files from the I-PAC office and keeping them on the backseat of Mamata’s vehicle.

I-PAC, which started working with the Trinamool after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, employs around 200-300 people with various teams that operate across the state, liaise with the elected representatives – from the MPs to the lowest in the pecking order.

For six years now, I-PAC has been involved in every decision and execution involving the party and the government, including its dirty work.

Since July last year, I-PAC was working on a training module for Trinamool workers targeted at the SIR, the most contentious issue in Bengal right now.

“They took away the SIR lists that we had prepared. The operation started early in the morning when no one was present at the office,” Mamata said.

Trinamool workers in Bhowanipore, Mamata’s home turf, hit the streets protesting against the raids.

Mamata announced that protests against the raids would be held across the state from 4pm on Thursday.