West Bengal: Supreme Court quashes Calcutta HC order on Trinamool leaders' assets

New Delhi: In much relief to 19 TMC leaders including ministers, the Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the Calcutta High Court’s observation of attaching Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the increase in asset case of the TMC leaders. The stay is given by the division bench of Chief Justice Uday Umesh Lalit.

It may be noted that the division bench of Calcutta High Court’s Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bhardwaj on August 8 had directed the ED to be a part of PIL regarding the assets and property details of 19 heavyweight Trinamool Congress leaders including present seven ministers.

Based on the affidavits filed by these leaders with the Election Commission of India (ECI) while filing their nominations for various elections, in 2017 Biplab Chowdhury filed a PIL about the growth of assets of these TMC leaders.

While, three Trinamool Congress ministers including Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) Mayor Firhad Hakim, Arup Roy and Jyotipriyo Mullick on Friday moved the Calcutta High Court on August 12 appealing the court to ‘reconsider’ its direction of attaching ED in a PIL filed against the increase of assets of 19 Trinamool Congress heavyweight leaders and ministers, TMC MLA Swarna Kamal Saha had filed a petition in the apex court.

Welcoming the observation of the apex court, TMC state general secretary and spokesperson Kunal Ghosh said that the complaint against TMC leaders is ‘baseless’ and also that it is ‘ploy’ of the opposition to malign TMC.

BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya said that ‘truth will soon prevail’.

It is pertinent to mention that the leaders named who had allegedly increased their assets includes two dead leaders including Subrata Mukherjee and Sadhan Pande.