Politics has picked up after three Congress MLAs from Jharkhand — Irfan Ansari, Rajesh Kachchap, and Naman Bixal Kongari — were arrested by the West Bengal Police and remanded to 10 days’ CID custody after a huge sum of money was seized from a vehicle with the three legislators inside it.
Now, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) apparently has found a Guwahati connection to the case. Questioning of the legislators is on and sources in CID told News18 that this money might have come from BJP-ruled Assam.
Sources say at first 2 MLAs went to Jharkhand on July 20 and then 3 Congress MLAs went to Guwahati. They were going back to Jharkhand on July 30, when they were held by Bengal police.
With the alleged Guwahati link emerging, the Trinamool Congress— which has been facing attacks from the Bharatiya Janata Party over the arrest of West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee and large sums of cash being recovered in connection with a scam— has found ammunition against the BJP.
TMC general secretary Kunal Ghosh said, “We demand more investigation and the source of this money. Why did they go to Guwahati? This is the BJP trying to topple the government and this money has everything to do with that.”
The BJP though is calling this another instance of Congress’s corruption. Dilip Ghosh, vice president, BJP, said, “Congress, TMC are all corrupt. This has nothing to do with the BJP.”
Since the so-called Operation Maharashtra that brought down the Uddhav Thackeray government was apparently carried out from Guwahati, the arrested Jharkhand MLAs visiting Assam’s capital is significant, say TMC sources.
The Congress had on Sunday alleged that the BJP was trying to topple the Congress-JMM-RJD government in Jharkhand by offering Rs 10 crore each to the arrested MLAs, and lodged a police complaint against them.
JMM has 30 MLAs in the 81-member assembly, while the Congress has 17, and RJD one. The BJP has 26 MLAs in the House.
With inputs from News18
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