Onus of shedding 'influential' tag on Partha Chatterjee: TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh

Fuelling speculations about Partha Chatterjee's future as a cabinet minister, Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh on Wednesday said it has to be seen how the senior Trinamool Congress leader sheds the tag of being "influential" without quitting as a minister of several departments. Chatterjee, whom the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested in connection with a school jobs scam, earlier in the day countered repeated queries by the media on whether he would resign by retorting why he should do so.

Chatterjee, who is now in ED custody, was approached by reporters outside a hospital where he was taken for a medical check-up before being interrogated by the central agency.

Reacting to his comments, Ghosh said, "He holds several portfolios as a cabinet minister. How he will shed the tag of being an influential person is for him to answer.”

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Chatterjee is the minister for commerce & industry, parliamentary affairs, information technology and electronics, public enterprises & industrial reconstruction. The ED has described him in the Calcutta High Court as an “influential person”.

Hours after Chatterjee’s arrest on July 23, Ghosh had told reporters that presently the party would not remove him as a cabinet minister or the secretary general of the TMC.

Amid the growing Opposition demands for the removal of Chatterjee from the cabinet, his official car, used by him for over 15 years, was on Tuesday deposited in the state Assembly.

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The TMC's mouthpiece "Jago Bangla" (Wake up, Bengal) has stopped naming Chatterjee either as a minister or the party's secretary general. However, his name is still there in the printer's line as its editor.

The CBI, as directed by the Calcutta High Court, is looking into the alleged irregularities committed in the recruitment of Group-C and D staff as well as teachers in government-sponsored and –aided schools on recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission. The ED is tracking the money trail in the scam.

Chatterjee was the education minister when the alleged irregularities took place.