KOLKATA: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday arrested Sujit Bose, a former minister in the erstwhile Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal, on charges related to an alleged municipal service recruitment scam under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Bose was arrested after being questioned for more than seven hours at the agency’s CGO Complex office in Salt Lake. He will be produced before a special PMLA court on Tuesday, where the agency is expected to seek his custodial remand.
This is the first arrest of a minister from the previous TMC government led by Mamata Banerjee after the BJP came to power in West Bengal, securing 207 of the state’s 294 Assembly seats. The TMC won 80 seats.
Bose was the state fire services minister and had appeared before the ED’s investigating team earlier this month as part of the ongoing probe.
The central probe agency alleged that Bose had recommended around 150 candidates for various posts in the South Dum Dum Municipality in exchange for financial benefits.
Officials also alleged that large cash deposits were traced to bank accounts said to be under Bose’s control during the course of the investigation.
Bose, accompanied by his son and a lawyer, arrived at the agency’s office on Monday morning carrying several documents sought by investigators. He had previously appeared before the agency on May 1, after which fresh information reportedly emerged, leading to his second summons.
Allegations of institutionalised corruption were a major poll plank for the BJP during the Assembly election campaign for the 294 seats, held in two phases on April 23 and 29.
Charges of corruption against the Trinamool Congress during its 15-year rule in West Bengal since 2011 were among the BJP leadership’s main campaign issues in the state.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah had launched blistering attacks on the Trinamool Congress over corruption during the election campaign.
After his first cabinet meeting on Monday morning at the state secretariat Nabanna, Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said the new government would take all steps to eliminate corruption from the administration.
Earlier, several ministers, including Partha Chatterjee and Jyotipriya Mullick, along with MLAs and key government officials during the Trinamool Congress regime, were interrogated and arrested in connection with the school recruitment scam, which led to the cancellation of jobs of 26,000 teaching and non-teaching staff, as well as alleged public distribution system (PDS), coal and cattle smuggling cases.
Earlier, Bose had skipped summons issued by the central agency, which probes money trails in corruption cases, citing his involvement in the election campaign.
The CBI, which had probed the municipal recruitment scam, alleged that municipal jobs were handed out in exchange for cash, similar to the recruitment scam involving primary teachers in the state.