The Calcutta High Court has appointed a special officer to manage the day-to-day expenses of the Mamata Banerjee-aligned Trinamool Congress from three bank accounts whose debit operations were frozen after a police complaint alleged that they held proceeds of crime.
Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya named retired Calcutta High Court judge Subrata Talukdar as special officer to oversee such expenses till September 30. The court also allowed the party to use the accounts for day-to-day spending and legal expenses, while making it clear that the arrangement is only to run the political party and will remain subject to further orders.
The complaint was lodged on June 18 at the Cyber Crime Police Station under the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate. It alleged that three TMC accounts in a private bank were repositories of proceeds of crime and sought action from the police. An FIR was registered and the three accounts were made debit-frozen the next day. The complaint was filed by leaders of another TMC faction led by party MLAs Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha.
The court said any two authorised signatories of the three accounts may present a cheque before the special officer, who will then place it before the bank for encashment. On the petitioner’s plea, the court also allowed payments towards legal expenditure of the Mamata Banerjee-aligned TMC and a monthly honorarium of Rs 1.25 lakh for the special officer from the same accounts till September 30.
The special officer has been asked to file a report on the expenditure incurred by the next hearing on September 21.
The bank has been directed to preserve electronic records and banking data of the three accounts and cooperate with the ongoing police investigation. The police have also been asked to submit a progress report on the next date of hearing. Noting that the question of recognising a TMC faction is pending before the Election Commission, the court said any decision by the poll body should be brought to its notice for vacating the interim order.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the petitioner, the Mamata Banerjee-aligned Trinamool Congress, told the court that the complainant belonged to a faction formed after the West Bengal Assembly election results were declared on May 4, with the “oblique motive” of crippling a political party. He also said the vote share gap between the TMC and the BJP in the Assembly election was five per cent.
Singhvi argued that the complainants had themselves benefited from these accounts because they received financial support from them to contest the election on TMC tickets. The petitioner sought permission to operate the three frozen accounts.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the police, said the investigating agency had to act quickly after receiving the complaint so that the petitioner faction could not carry out illegal transactions through the three accounts. He said the rival faction was also seeking recognition as the official TMC group and that the matter had to be decided by the Election Commission of India.
Senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appearing for the complainant, said allowing the petitioner to operate the accounts would negate the existence of the faction formed after the election result, and urged that the police investigation should continue.
The police submitted an affidavit before the court setting out the circumstances and materials that led to the direction to freeze debit transactions in the three accounts. The bank had filed a report a day earlier giving details of the corpus in the accounts and the names of their authorised signatories.
The court noted that, prima facie, the complaint before the cyber crime police station appeared “omnibus in nature” and did not identify any specific incident or transaction to support the allegation that the accounts had been illegally enriched. It also noted that the complaint expressed apprehension that, unless the accounts were debit-frozen, electronic and transaction data could be concealed or dissipated.
“At this stage, the court is unable to find particular materials which could have been the basis of such abrupt steps,” Justice Bhattacharyya said on the freezing of the three accounts. The court also noted that the complainant had been a TMC member before the May 4 result and had been elected as the party’s candidate. It recorded that the petitioner had placed documents showing that the complainant had received funds from the same three accounts and used the money for the campaign, and that the complaint was lodged after the election as part of the faction formed later.
Additional Advocate General Rajdeep Majumdar, also for the police, said Rs 6 crore had been transferred from one of the accounts to a private entity a few days before the complaint was filed.
The court’s interim order now allows the Mamata Banerjee-aligned TMC to meet essential political and legal expenses from the three frozen accounts through a special officer, while the police investigation continues and the wider dispute over recognition of the rival factions remains pending before the Election Commission.
– Ends
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