Suvendu Adhikari urges West Bengal governor to recommend CAG-action against CM, cabinet

The BJP leader says the recent CAG report highlighted facts concerning financial irregularities in the State.

The BJP-Bengal MLAs would walk to Raj Bhavan on February 9, and ask Governor CV Ananda Bose to recommend before CAG the filing of a FIR against the chief minister, and the state cabinet.

BJP-Bengal leader Suvendu Adhikari, on Tuesday, said that the State governor has the power to make such a recommendation.

The recent CAG report, the leader pointed out, highlights facts concerning financial irregularities in the state. The BJP in Bengal has picked up the issue, politically.

Addressing the media in the Assembly precincts, Adhikari said that a discussion on the recent CAG-report concerning Bengal was not permitted within the House.

Last Friday, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about CAG’s state finance audit report for 2020-21. Banerjee stated that a delay has been reported with regard to the submission of utilisation certificates for the period 2002-03 to 2020-21.

Banerjee had mentioned that on scrutinising CAG’s observations, it was found that the departments concerned had submitted the certificates on time to the central ministries, and hence no utilisation certificates of the preceding period were pending.

Banerjee considered the observations made by CAG as “incorrect”, and made “without application of due diligence and examination of the procedures for submission of utilisation certificates as per Government of India guidelines”. The chief minister had mentioned that “such erroneous reports give a misleading picture”.

Meanwhile, the ED’s raids, on Tuesday, at multiple locations in the state in connection with the alleged corruption concerning the 100-day rural job scheme, also kept the regional politics stirred.

Senior Trinamool leader Shashi Panja said that the ED raids were being conducted since morning, related to MGNREGA and fake job cards. She alleged that the ED receives directives from the BJP, and Bengal is being deprived of funds due to “political vendetta”.

“The truth is that the BJP lost its mind after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that the 21 lakh MGNREGA workers – who worked under the central scheme but were being deprived – will be getting this money from the state government,” she said.