TMC squirms as 'Abhishek Banerjee' named in CBI chargesheet

A day before West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee is slated to address party leaders to set the roadmap for the 2026 Assembly elections, the CBI created a stir by submitting a chargesheet in the jobs for-cash scam naming "Abhishek Banerjee" without identifying who the person was.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

Though Trinamool Congress leaders and spokespersons professed ignorance about the identity of the person named in the charge sheet, the lawyer for Abhishek Banerjee, the party's second-in-command and Mamata Banerjee's nephew, sent out a press release on his behalf, saying that the claims made in the latest CBI charge sheet regarding the alleged teacher recruitment case in West Bengal were "misleading and unsubstantiated".

The CBI, in its third supplementary charge sheet submitted in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case, referred to an audio file of a recorded conversation from 2017 and named a certain Abhishek Banerjee who demanded Rs 15 crore for the illegal appointments.

The State's Opposition parties have repeatedly alleged involvement of Mamata Banerjee's nephew and Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee in the scam. The TMC MP has already appeared before Central probe agencies - the ED and the CBI - multiple times and faced examinations in connection with the alleged recruitment irregularities.