The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) wants to look at the details of visitors’ list to the office of the Kolkata Mayor from 2014 till 2019 in connection with the Narada probe.
The Narada sting operation was carried out by journalist Matthew Samuel in 2014 which was published on a private website before the 2016 Assembly elections in West Bengal – in which individuals resembling the former Kolkata Mayor Sovon Chatterjee and current Mayor Firhad Hakim – were shown discussing cash dealings. Several other individuals resembling Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy (who is now in the Bharatiya Janata Party) and an IPS officer were also seen in the videos dealing with cash with a fictitious company for offering favours unofficially.
Since June 2017, the CBI, Enforcement Directorate (ED) and a parliamentary ethics committee are probing the case.
Currently, CBI officers have been questioning four officials from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) regarding the system of listing and recording names of visitors to the Mayor’s office. They want to find out how appointments are fixed and who are in charge of monitoring entry into the VIP zone of the KMC headquarters on SN Banerjee Road in Kolkata.
Among officials who are being questioned is Amlan Lahiri, the former Mayor Sovon Chatterjee’s officer on special duty. Hakim took over as Kolkata Mayor from Chatterjee after the latter’s falling out with the party leadership in November 2018. Chatterjee was Kolkata Mayor from 2010 to November 2018, when he resigned from the post after a bitter row with the party chief Mamata Banerjee.
Since 2018, Sovon Chatterjee has distanced himself from the Trinamool Congress and there are talks that he is likely to join the BJP. Chatterjee however has denied this possibility so far.
Central investigating agencies – the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the CBI – are currently probing a number of cases in the state and a number of individuals are being summoned for the past couple of weeks in this connection. Among the cases being probed are the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scams.
Among others, actors Rituparna Sengupta and Prasenjit Chatterjee were summoned this week. Earlier this week, former Trinamool Congress minister Madan Mitra was interrogated and party MP Satabdi Roy was called by the ED.
Businessman Shibaji Panja, artist Suvaprasanna and former CPIM leader Lakshman Seth have also been interrogated by the two central investigating agencies.
