Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday slammed the Centre, saying it was “not easy to break Bengal” with the aid of investigating agencies, amid the ongoing investigation into the SSC fraud case in West Bengal, where state minister Partha Chatterjee is one of the primary accused.
Banerjee said that the “BJP has no work” other than overthrowing governments, and that the ruling party at the Centre wanted to destabilise democratically elected state governments.
“They (BJP) have no work, their job is to take over the state governments through 3-4 agencies. They’ve taken Maharashtra, now Jharkhand but Bengal has defeated them. It’s not easy to break Bengal as you have to fight the Royal Bengal Tiger first,” the CM said.
The West Bengal chief minister claimed that the would not return to power after the 2024 general elections. “I believe that BJP will not come in 2024 (to power). Unemployment in India is increasing by 40 per cent but it decreased by 45 per cent in Bengal,” she said.
She also alleged that a ‘media trial’ was on to tarnish Bengal’s image. “Today media trial is going on and they are calling people accused. They just want to create a bad impression of Bengal.”
Bengal Industries Minister Partha Chatterjee was detained on Saturday on money-laundering accusations related to the SSC (School Service Commission) scandal. When he was the state Education Minister, he was accused of playing a part in suspected unlawful appointments of schoolteachers and employees in government-run schools.
Arpita Mukherjee, Chatterjee’s close friend, was also detained as part of the ED’s probe into the fraud.
On Friday, the ED apprehended Mukherjee after claiming to have seized large sums of cash totaling around Rs 20 crore from her apartment. On Wednesday, the ED called another Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA, Manik Bhattacharya, for interrogation at the agency’s Kolkata headquarters.
Manik Bhattacharya is a former Bengal Primary Education Board chairman.
