BJP welcomes Supreme Court order for CBI probe into Saradha Scam

KOLKATA: Welcoming the Supreme Court order directing a CBI investigation into the Saradha chit fund scam, the BJP today said that the Trinamool Congress stood badly exposed with the connivance and blessings of the government.

"We welcome the Supreme Court order. As far as Saradha is concerned, TMC is badly exposed," BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said at a press conference here.

Javadekar wondered why the TMC government was so long opposed to a CBI probe, noting that "the state government lawyer was opposing the probe till today".

"We are asking why was this government opposed to the CBI probe till the last moment? Because it was afraid of its nexus getting exposed. There is a clear nexus between the leaders and the government and this Saradha. People are defrauded and you are benefited. That's the quid pro quo," the BJP leader claimed.

He went on to say, "Therefore, this scam is the worst kind of scam designed to loot the public with the connivance and blessings of the government of the day."

"We want the CBI and the ED to focus on the money trail because what the people have lost is Rs 5,000 crore and what the TMC government was planning to give is only Rs 500 crore. It's a pittance," the BJP Rajya Sabha MP said.

The Mamata Banerjee government had formed a one-man Commission of Enquiry of Justice (retd) Shyamal Sen and set up a corpus of Rs 500 crore to pay back the investors, numbering into lakhs.

The Bidhannagar Police has so far been investigating the Saradha scam for the state government and has under custody Saradha chairman Sudipta Sen and suspended Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Kunal Ghosh for an alleged involvement in the scam.

The Centre's Enforcement Directorate (ED) is also probing the case and arrested Sen's wife Piyali, who is now on bail, and son Shuvojit in connection with Money Laundering cases registered against them.

Petitions were moved before the Supreme Court by some of the affected persons seeking a CBI probe into the scam, which covers the states of Odhisa and Assam apart from West Bengal.

Javadekar said, "Scams happen all over but here is a case of a scam which has the blessings of the government. And therefore this is more serious. We want money trail to be the focus area."

He said that TMC talked of the poor but here the poor have been looted.

Asked about state finance minister Amit Mitra's statement that the probe order came just two days before the final phase of the Lok Sabha poll, Javadekar said, "I don't expect this from Amit Mitra. He knows how the courts function. He is not a rowdy of the TMC, but he has started talking like them. It shows the company he is keeping."