TMC leaders holding dharna outside EC office detained by Delhi Police; Mamata raises campaign against 'misuse of central agencies'

New Delhi: The Trinamool Congress on Monday raised the pitch of its campaign against alleged misuse of the central probe agencies by the Bharatiya Janata Party, even as some leaders of Mamata Banerjee’s party staged a demonstration in front of the Election Commission’s headquarters in New Delhi demanding the poll panel’s intervention.

The TMC leaders, including Sagarika Ghosh, Saket Gokhale, Dola Sen, Abir Biswas, and Derek O’Brien, were detained by the Delhi Police after they staged the demonstration in front of the Nirvachan Sadan – the headquarters of the EC in New Delhi. Banerjee’s nephew and the TMC general secretary, Abhishek Bandopadhyay, led a delegation to the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata late at night to protest against alleged harassment of the party’s leaders by the Delhi Police. He later said that Governor C V Ananda Bose had promised to look into the matter.

The TMC supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee continued to lead her party’s campaign against what it called an alliance between the BJP and the central probe organisations – like the Enforcement Directorate, National Investigation Agency, and the Central Bureau of Investigation – ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal. She went on to accuse Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP of turning the country into a jail. “The real ‘Modi ki Guarantee’ is to put all opposition leaders in jail after June 4”, she said ridiculing the BJP’s campaign line highlighting the pledges of the prime minister.

Her party particularly targeted Dhan Ram Singh, a senior NIA officer in Kolkata. It alleged that Jitendra Tiwari, a BJP leader in West Bengal, had met the NIA officer last month and handed over to him a list of the TMC leaders, whom the saffron party had wanted to be arrested by the agency during the seven-phase polling in the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.

The TMC leaders met the Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and the Election Commissioners, Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, to lodge a complaint against the BJP for “blatantly misusing” the NIA to conspire against the political opponents of the BJP. They also demanded the removal of the incumbent chiefs of the NIA, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), and the Income Tax Department of the Ministry of Finance. They particularly demanded the immediate transfer of Singh, the NIA SP, from his present posting. The TMC also asked the commission to restrain Tiwari and other BJP leaders from meeting any official of any central agency during the election period.

They later staged a sit-in demonstration in front of the Nirvachan Sadan before being detained by the Delhi Police personnel.

“The prime minister is coming to West Bengal to address election rallies. I have no issues with that. But the way he is saying that stern action will be taken against the opposition over corruption after the Lok Sabha poll results is unacceptable,” Banerjee said in an election rally in Bankura in the state.

Modi had addressed an election rally in Jalpaiguri in north Bengal on Sunday. He had said that while he was stressing the eradication of corruption, the opposition parties were trying to shield the corrupt. He had also promised more stringent action against the corrupt after June 4, the day the votes cast to elect the new Lok Sabha would be counted.

“Is this how a prime minister should speak? What if I say I will put BJP leaders in jail after the election? But I will not say this as this is unacceptable in a democracy,” said the TMC supremo and West Bengal chief minister.

She alleged that the BJP was using the NIA, CBI, and ED to raid the houses of the TMC leaders and workers at night. “Henceforth if the TMC leaders are arrested by the agencies, then their wives will hit the streets. We are not scared of these agencies.”

The war of words between the TMC and the BJP over the alleged misuse of the central agencies escalated after a team of NIA officers was attacked by a mob at Bhupatinagar in the Purba Medinipur district of the state when they had gone to arrest two persons in connection with a December 2022 blast. A team of ED officials had been similarly attacked at Sandeshkhali in the North 24 Parganas of the state on January 5 when they had gone to search the residence of the local TMC leader Shahjahan Sheikh in connection with alleged irregularities in the public distribution system of the state.