West Bengal Leader of Opposition Adhikari meets Union Home Minister Shah
Aug 02, 2022
New Delhi [India], August 2 : West Bengal Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Parliament here.
The meeting comes in the backdrop of swift political developments in the Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal. Following a massive recruitment scam in the state the ED conducted raids and recovered crores in cash and kind. TMC leader Partha Chatterjee, who was then a minister in the state government, was accused of corruption and arrested.
Following the raids, the Mamata Banerjee government was forced to remove Chatterjee from her cabinet and is set to induct new faces. The BJP, meanwhile, sharpened its attacks on the state government. West Bengal BJP chief and MP Sukanta Majumdar was also planning to call on Home Minister Shah.
"There is something very important to intimate Amit Shah Ji about Bengal especially after the SSC scam that was recently busted. The Bengal people's mindset has completely changed after the scam came to light. They have begun to believe that the Mamata Banerjee government has become completely corrupt and the government has no moral right to continue ruling," Majumdar said.
Asked about the time of the meeting, the West Bengal BJP chief said it would be decided keeping Shah's busy schedule in mind.
"He gives more importance to Bengal. Whenever MPs of Bengal go to him, he meets them. It is his love for Bengal. If we get the time, it will be great for us," he said.
The Trinamool Congress, meanwhile, also tried to hit back at the BJP. It questioned why the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was silent on the recovery of huge unaccounted cash from the vehicle of Congress lawmakers from Jharkhand.
Congress and other opposition parties have claimed that the BJP was trying to topple the JMM-Congress government in Jharkhand.
The TMC also demanded that the role of Leader of the Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari be looked into in the light of the recovery of the money, as he had recently remarked that "after Maharashtra, it will be Jharkhand, Rajasthan and West Bengal."
Acting on a tip-off, the West Bengal Police intercepted an SUV in Howrah on Saturday evening in which Congress MLAs of Jharkhand were travelling and allegedly found nearly half a crore of rupees in it. After questioning, they were formally arrested on Sunday afternoon.
The SUV in which MLAs Irfan Ansari, Rajesh Kachchap and Naman Bixal Kongari were travelling was intercepted on National Highway-16 at Ranihati in the Panchla police station area.
In a tweet, the ruling Trinamool Congress referred to "murmurs of horse-trading and the possible toppling of the Jharkhand government". Chief Minister and Trinamool boss Mamata Banerjee had recently accused the BJP of trying to force a change of government in Jharkhand after the recent change in Maharashtra.
Responding to the allegations made by Congress against the BJP, Union Minister Arjun Munda on Sunday said leaders of the Congress make allegations to hide their corrupt practices.