Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday launched a blistering attack on Union Home Minister Amit Shah, accusing him of misusing central agencies for political purposes after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out extensive raids — including at the residence of I-PAC chief Prateek Jain — amid rising tension ahead of upcoming elections.
Banerjee, who rushed to Jain’s Loudon Street home in Kolkata during the ongoing searches, questioned whether orchestrating such raids was part of the home minister’s duties and described the action as a deliberate attempt to intimidate her party. “Is it the duty of the ED and the home minister to collect political parties’ documents?” she asked, asserting that officials were trying to seize internal strategy files, hard drives and confidential material of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) — material she said had no relevance to a financial investigation.
“This is not law enforcement, this is political vendetta,” Mamata said, adding that the home minister was acting like “the nastiest home minister, not someone who protects the country.” She also linked the raids with ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercises in West Bengal, alleging that voter names were being deleted in ways she said affected electoral fairness.
“They (BJP) are the killers of democracy. In the name of SIR, they have deleted more than 1.5 crore names from the voters’ list. They have sent notices to Amartya Sen, poet Joy Goswami, and actor Dev. The names of women and young people have been deleted… Even a murderer is allowed to defend himself, but the genuine voters, maximum women who married recently and whose surnames have changed, or whose addresses have changed, their names have been deleted,” Banerjee said.
“I am sorry Mr. Prime Minister, please control your Home Minister… If you (BJP) cannot fight with us, then why are you coming to Bengal? Defeat us in a democratic way. You are using agencies to loot our papers, our strategy, our voters, our data, our Bengal… By doing all this, the number of seats you were getting will be reduced to zero…” she added, while addressing reporters.
The ED operation — which included searches at multiple locations nationally as part of a probe into an alleged fake government job scam — saw teams at both Jain’s residence and the Indian Political Action Committee’s Salt Lake office, an organisation closely associated with TMC’s election strategy.
Banerjee claimed to have retrieved party documents during her intervention and warned that similar actions against opposition parties would provoke strong reactions. “Because of the elections, they are collecting all the information about my party,” she said, challenging the Centre to explain its actions.
