ED summons Abhishek Banerjee on Sept 13 — the day of INDIA panel meeting; TMC leader hits out

Reacting to the ED summon, the 35-year-old TMC MP from Diamond Harbour hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government at the Centre. “FIRST meet of INDIA’s coordination comm is on 13th Sept in Delhi, where I’m a member. But, @dir_ed conveniently served me a notice just now to appear before them on the VERY SAME DAY! One can’t help but marvel at the TIMIDITY & VACUOUSNESS of the 56-inch chest model,” he posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, with the hashtag “#FearofINDIA”.

Abhishek Banerjee is one of the 14 members of the INDIA coordination committee formed by the Opposition bloc in its last meeting in Mumbai. The meet, to be held at the residence of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, will chalk out the coalition’s strategies and future programmes, they said.

The coordination committee would act as the top decision-making body of the opposition alliance.

Besides Pawar and Banerjee, the coordination committee has K C Venugopal of the Congress, T R Baalu (DMK), Hemant Soren (JMM), Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena-UBT), Tejashwi Yadav (RJD), Raghav Chadha (AAP), Javed Ali Khan (SP), Lalan Singh of the JD(U), D Raja (CPI), Omar Abdullah (National Conference), Mehbooba Mufti (PDP), and a leader of the CPI(M).

The summons to the TMC MP comes weeks after the central probe agency conducted raids at the office of ‘Leaps and Bounds Pvt Ltd’ in Kolkata in connection with the school jobs scam. The ED claimed that Abhishek Banerjee is the chief executive officer of the company.

According to the probe agency, three suspicious financial transactions amounting to several lakhs rupees were made between the company and one of the accused in the school jobs scam case, Sujoy Krishna Bhadra, who was arrested by the central agency on May 30.

“The accused, Bhadra, was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of M/s Leaps and Bounds Private Limited, a company used for making dubious transactions running into crores of rupees. Bhadra was also a director in this company from April 2012 to March 2016. Abhishek Banerjee, MP from TMC, is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of M/s Leaps and Bounds Private Limited and was also a director in the company from April 2012 to January 2014,” the ED said last week.

Abhishek Banerjee has always denied wrongdoing and called the ED action borne out of political vendetta.