Kolkata: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Friday lashed out at the national investigation agency CBI a day after the agency questioned her close aide Manik Majumdar and summoned her senior party leaders Derek O’Brien and Subrata Bakshi, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
“Don’t be surprised if they send a notice to my cook (at my Kalighat home). I’m waiting for it. How many notices can they send? I’m waiting,” she told a press conference here.
“Today I have opposed the Budget, spoken a word or two before you all. For this, they may even arrest me. But I do not blame CBI officers because they are being compelled to do that. I have heard that these officers are summoned to the PM’s residence. They are told ‘kuch toh karo. Isko notice bhejo, usko notice bhejo. Chaiwallah seh kya CBIwallah ban gaye hain (Do something. Send notices to these people. Tea seller has become CBI sleuth?),” she said, TOI reports.
Replying to her, BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said: “They lack political courtesy. She is surrounded by people who are on CBI radar. Realising that, she is now scared.”
According to close sources, Mamata didn’t take CBI questioning Majumdar lightly.
“He is ailing and elderly. He is honest to the core. They did not spare him too. What are they trying to signal? They will intimidate me? Political persecution is not new to me. I cannot be intimidated like this,” a senior TMC leader quoted her as saying.
Party leader Majumdar has been working with Mamata since she was an MP. He now handles party affairs from her home.
Sources from the party claimed that the chief minister has done over 100 paintings, some of which she has sold at very low prices.
“No one questions that. She herself has never personally taken a single paisa from the sale of paintings,” the source said.
Another Trinamool leader said, “Every paisa is accounted for. There are annual audits to prove it. However, there was a phase when the party accounts were looked after by a senior leader now in BJP. He left everything in a mess.But that has been corrected since. They can let loose as many agencies as they want but they cannot prove anything.”