CBI vs Kolkata Police: Mamata Banerjee following Arvind Kejriwal's footsteps, says BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today launched a blistering attack against the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee over her dharna to protest action against Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar and said that the West Bengal CM is following the footsteps of Arvind Kejriwal. “What is happening? A Police Commissioner is sitting on a dharna with politicians? What is the meaning of this? By sitting on dharna West Bengal CM is following the footsteps of Arvind Kejriwal,” Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Denouncing Kolkata Police chief Rajeev Kumar’s presence on dharna stage, Ravi Shankar Prasad said,” A commissioner-level public servant sitting in a Dharna is unprecedented. What is going in the country?” “Is it a crime to investigate scams? The fundamental question today is that this is not a gathbandhan, we call it an opportunistic alliance,” he added.

On the issue of Narada and Sarada scams, Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “In 2014 Congress tweeted Rahul Gandhi's statement that 20 lakh people lost their money in chit fund scam in West Bengal. We took oath on 26 May 2014 so all these inquiries in Narada, Saradha scams started before us.”

Rejecting the opposition charge that the CBI's move to question Kumar amounted to an attack on the federal structure by the Modi government, BJP leader and Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said it cannot be cited as a shield to save the corrupt and asserted that the agency acted as per law.

Speaking to reporters, Prasad took a swipe at the unity among opposition parties against the CBI action, describing it as an "alliance of the corrupt", and said its "soldiers" from Bihar to Uttar Pradesh, including Congress president Rahul Gandhi, are facing probe in different cases of alleged graft.

Banerjee has defied all norms to sit in a dharna in Kolkata, he said, adding that the police commissioner's decision to join her protest was unprecedented and was in violation of norms guiding police officers' conduct.

He said Banerjee kept quiet when many of her Trinamool Congress leaders, including MPs, were arrested but has started a dharna to support a police officer. It seems he knows a lot of secrets, Prasad said. "These suspicious circumstances clearly indicate that the police commissioner knows a lot and therefore needed to be saved by the chief minister," he said.