KOLKATA :

 

THE West Bengal CID on Tuesday launched simultaneous searches at Trinamool Congress’s central office at party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence and at national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s Camac Street office in the city, probing alleged forged signatures of TMC MLAs that triggered a party split. The agency officers maintained that the raids were held to dredge out the original copy of TMC’s meeting resolution book and attendance sheet containing signatures of 70 MLAs present at the May 6 meeting held the party office adjacent to former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s residence. Both Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek were out of town.

 

According to the CID, Abhishek Banerjee, based on the said resolution, had first intimated the Speaker of the Bengal assembly, on May 9, that the party had chosen Sobhabdeb Chattopadhyay as the Assembly’s Leader of Opposition, Asima Patra and Nayna Bandyopadhyay as deputy LoPs and Firhad Hakim as the chief whip. Agency officers said that Abhishek followed up the intimation with a written communication to the Speaker on May 20, where he enclosed a copy of the meeting resolution book and the attendance sheet, reiterating the party’s endorsement for the assembly posts. Two expelled TMC legislators, Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha, had lodged a complaint before Speaker Rathindra Bose that “no resolution was adopted about the selection of LoP” in the party’s May 6 meeting, and that the duo had signed the meeting resolution book on a later date on May 19. The MLAs alleged that the May 6 resolution was “manufactured and fabricated” and stated that as many as 14 of the 70 signatures were in “block letters”.