Trinamul Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has once again received an appearance summons from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the school recruitment scam case whose money trail the agency is probing. But it’s the appearance date which has made the party’s second in command turn livid.
The ED has asked Banerjee to appear for another round of questioning on September 13 which coincides with the date of the first scheduled meeting of the coordination committee of the INDIA alliance of Opposition parties which is scheduled to take place in Delhi.
Abhishek is the Trinamul’s representative at the crucial 14-member committee which is supposed to formulate fight strategies of the 28-party bloc to take on the BJP for the upcoming general elections and devise a best possible seat-sharing formula amongst the constituents to avoid Opposition votes getting divided.
Banerjee vented his exasperation on social media platforms and lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi without directly naming him. “One can’t help but marvel at the TIMIDITY & VACOUSNESS of the 56-inch chest model,” Banerjee’s post on his X timeline, with the hashtag ‘FearofINDIA’, read.
Banerjee obliquely targeted Modi while questioning the agency’s selection of the date of his examination and attributed the move to the ruling dispensation at the Centre getting rattled by the forged INDIA alliance in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Sources close to Banerjee, however, confirmed that the leader is likely to honour the summons and visit the agency’s office at the CGO Complex in Salt Lake and give the INDIA committee meet a miss.
Banerjee was earlier summoned by the CBI in connection with the same case in May when the MP was in the middle of his party’s Naba Jowar Yatra mass outreach programme ahead of the panchayat elections in Bengal. Banerjee, while denouncing the agency move and questioning its timing, had kept his programme on hold to appear before the investigators.
Emerging from the CBI’s Nizam Palace office in central Calcutta after getting grilled for over eight hours, Banerjee had debunked the exercise as an “utter waste of time” and a “show of political vindictiveness and agency-raj of an authoritarian government”.
“Show me a shred of evidence of my involvement in this or any of the other corruption cases the central agencies are probing. Instead of calling me to your offices, build a gallows and I will walk up to it and hang myself,” has been Banerjee’s refrain.
Banerjee was issued an appearance notice again by the central probe agency which the leader turned down on grounds of his involvement with the ongoing rural polls at that point in time. He had, however, assured full cooperation with the investigations at later dates.
The Sunday evening development, however, evidently points to the leader’s grudging acceptance of the appearance notice to which he is very likely to add political overtones like in the past, political observers believe.