Kolkata, Oct 3 Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee should have given prior intimation to Enforcement Directorate (ED) regarding his inability to appear at the central agency’s Salt Lake office this morning, the Calcutta High Court observed on Tuesday.
Banerjee was supposed to be present at ED's Salt Lake office in the northern outskirts of Kolkata for questioning in relation to the school job case.
Though Banerjee had made it clear through an X (formerly Twitter) message that he will not be present at the central agency office owing to his political preoccupation in Delhi where he is currently is, he had not given any written intimation to ED on this count.
However, this morning, his counsel approached the division bench of Justices Soumen Sen and Uday Kumar, seeking clarification on the September 29 order of the single-judge bench of Justice Amrita Sinha on the Enforcement Directorate (ED) probe in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case.
Justice Sinha had clearly directed the ED that their scheduled investigation process should not be hampered at any cost and for the sake of carrying forward the investigation the central agency will have the liberty to take any step as per legal provisions.
Banerjee has also made the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is conducting a parallel probe in the school job case, a party in his petition.
On Tuesday, the CBI counsel Billwadal Bhattacharyya also questioned the justification of filing the petition at the division bench instead of informing the other central agency about his absence from the interrogation session.
Thereafter, Justice Sen told Banerjee’s counsel that his client should have informed ED about his inability to be present at its office in advance.
"Did your client inform the investigative agency about his prior engagements? If not, why was the central agency not informed? Your client should have informed the agency about his inability to be present in advance," Justice Sen observed. Thereafter, he directed Banerjee’s counsel to serve copies of the petition to all the parties concerned. The next hearing in the matter has been scheduled on Wednesday.
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