KOLKATA: Three heavyweight Trinamool Congress leaders in West Bengal — former Education Minister Partha Chatterjee, MLA and ex-President of West Bengal Board of Primary Education (WBBPE) Manik Bhattacharya and the party's Birbhum district President Anubrata Mondal — are presently in judicial custody, the first two in connection with the teacher recruitment scam, while Mondal is in custody for his alleged role in the cattle smuggling scam.
However, for the Trinamool leadership, Chatterjee is a much bigger embarrassment than Bhattacharya and Mondal, feels veteran Trinamool leader and three-time Lok Sabha member, Saugata Roy.
According to Roy, viral videos and images of huge amount of cash and gold being recovered from the residence of Chatterjee's close associate Arpita Mukherjee made the difference with regard to the public image of the party.
"The manner in which cash and gold were recovered from Partha's close aide's house is surely a bigger embarrassment for the party. However, the same is not the case for Manik Bhattacharya or Anubrata Mondal. The central agencies have claimed to have recovered some documents from their residences. But there was no cash recovery," Roy said.
A senior member of the state Cabinet said on condition of anonymity that the party leadership also did not approve the manner in which Chatterjee tried to call Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee or provided her personal mobile number as the contact number after his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in July.
"Surely, Partha did not discuss all his personal matters with the Chief Minister. We can easily assume that his attempts to call her immediately after his arrest was to involve the entire party in the trouble he has got entangled in," he said.
However, the leaders of opposition parties in the state are not willing to subscribe to the logic of Roy, alleging that Roy is trying to confuse everyone by giving the example of "good thief" and "bad thief".
"While cash has been recovered from the residence of Partha Chatterjee, the central agencies have also traced crores of unauthorised money from different bank accounts of Bhattacharya and Mondal. Both were fruits of corruption and all three are equally guilty," said CPI-M leader Sujan Chakraborty.
State BJP spokesman Samik Bhattacharya said that if pictures and videos of cash recovery would have made such a difference, then Roy himself was seen accepting cash in the Narada sting video operations. "Now what will he have to say about this?" he questioned. (IANS)
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