AGENCIES GET FLAK AS TRINAMOO LEADERS GET BAIL IN GRAFTCASES

The tide began turning from the second half of 2024, when leader after leader started getting bail.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

If 2022 and 2023 were the worst period for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress since some of her closest associates were arrested by the Central agencies on charges of corruption, the tide seems to have turned since the second half of 2024. And in the spotlight are the investigating agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Since 2022, a host of TMC leaders, including heavyweights like the party's then secretary-general Partha Chattopadhyay and minister Jyotipriya Mallick were picked up by the Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation, in myriad cases of corruption.

The visuals of heaps of currency notes and mounds of jewellery recovered from the apartments owned by a small-time starlet, Arpita Mukherjee, a close associate of Partha Chattopadhyay, created huge discomfiture for Mamata Banerjee, who had, for long, created and maintained a pristine image for herself. And though she promptly distanced herself and her party from Chattopadhyay, it was a very damning indictment of the party.

As investigations progressed, the list of arrested leaders continued to grow longer.

Partha Chattopadhyay, the former education minister was arrested by the ED in July 2022 in connection with the West Bengal School Service Commission teacher recruitment scam. So was Manik Bhattacharya, the former chairman of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education and TMC MLA, who was arrested by the ED in October 2022 in connection with the teacher recruitment scam.

Soon after that, the CBI arrested TMC MLA Jiban Krishna Saha in April 2023 after extensive questioning related to the teacher recruitment scam.

The corruption racket also ensnared other leaders like Kuntal Ghosh, a TMC youth wing leader, and Shantanu Banerjee.

Ghosh was arrested by the ED in January 2023, and Banerjee was picked up in March.