KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee went through a nine-hour questioning session at the Enforcement Directorate’s New Delhi headquarters on Monday, following which he threw a direct challenge to the BJP, vowing to go to every state in the country to defeat “these autocrats and cowards... who cannot defeat us politically”.
Banerjee entered the ED headquarters around 11am. “I am ready to face any investigation. The agency’s officials are doing their work and I will cooperate with them,” he said before entering the ED headquarters alone.
He came out around 8pm, making it clear that he saw the ED questioning as a tool to harass a party that had decimated the BJP politically in the Bengal polls. “Aap ko jo ukhadna hai ukhad lo (Inflict whatever harm you can inflict). Koi mai ka lal rokh sake toh rokh le,” Banerjee said after the nine-hour session.
The 33-year-old MP mentioned the Congress by name while iterating that the Trinamool, “unlike others”, would not “sell its spine or hide inside our home”. “We have fire in our belly. We will defeat the BJP in 2024,” he said.
“Politics should be fought politically. They have been defeated in Bengal politically and now they are taking refuge behind their agencies and resources,” Banerjee said. “We will go to all the states where you have murdered democracy. Let the BJP put all its might, vigour, threat, resources,” he said before adding: “Mind my words... all its resources are going to fall flat. Hum zindagi de denge, zindagi dav peh laga denge par sar nahi jhukayenge (We will give our life but will not bow before them). We will not sell our spine to these cowards and autocrats who cannot defeat us politically.”
Banerjee also mentioned that 25 BJP MLAs had queued up to join the Trinamool. “We are not taking them in. But, if they join the Trinamool, they will resign from the assembly, fight elections again and will be re-elected,” Banerjee added.
The Trinamool won 213 of the 290 seats that were contested in this year’s Bengal polls; the BJP won 77. But three of these 77 BJP MLAs have already publicly joined the Trinamool and at least four others have “sent feelers, seeking to join us”, Trinamool leaders have said.
Banerjee also referred to the nine-hour session he underwent. “I stepped in at 11am and now it is almost 8pm. I have been questioned for nine hours. I have nothing to say against the officers. They are doing their job. I have cooperated with them. I have tried to answer their questions to the best of my ability. I have also given them a written statement,” he said, adding: “This is a Kolkata case but I have been summoned for questioning in New Delhi.”
The ED is probing the money-laundering aspect of the CBI’s probe into “illegal coal-mining”. The CBI has already named several people as accused; they include “kingpin” Anup Majhi, former Trinamool youth leader Binay Mishra and some central government officers.
The CBI also questioned the Trinamool national general secretary’s wife, Rujira Banerjee, before the Bengal polls. The ED summoned her to appear in its Delhi office last week but she requested the agency to question her in Kolkata, explaining it would be difficult for her to travel to Delhi leaving her children behind during a pandemic.
