Kolkata: West Bengal minister and Trinamool Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee is getting isolated from the government as well as the party. It happened after a revelation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) about his involvement in a teacher recruitment scam, sources said on Wednesday. Because of the scam, the vehicle that Chatterjee was allotted as a minister by the government has been withdrawn. At present, he is the minister of commerce and industries, parliamentary affairs and information technology and electronics. The state government allotted a vehicle on the grounds of his ministerial portfolio, but the vehicle was withdrawn from Tuesday. An official of the assembly secretary said that this had been done following the consent of the minister concerned.
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Aside from that, the Trinamool Congress’s mouthpiece Jago Bangla has stopped referring to Partha Chatterjee as the state minister or the party’s secretary general. Sources said that the top leadership of the party had taken the decision. A senior leader of the Trinamool Congress said that what irked Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was that Chatter had given her name and mobile number as a contact person to ED. He may, therefore, be stripped off the ministerial positions as well as the party post for the time being. At a recent public meeting, Banerjee said that her name was being dragged into the controversy, but neither the party nor the state government has anything to do with money recovery. A sum of more than Rs 20 crore was ferreted out from the house of an acquaintance of Chatterjee, Arpita Mukherjee.
