Kolkata: Amid the accelerating controversies over the signature mismatches of Trinamool Congress legislators in a resolution naming party MLAs for four crucial positions in the West Bengal Assembly which are reserved for the Opposition bench, Trinamool Congress General Secretary and the party’s Lok Sabha member, Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday wrote a second letter to the Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose, naming the same four party legislators for the four Assembly posts reserved for the Opposition.
Earlier this month, Abhishek Banerjee wrote a letter to the Assembly Speaker, naming Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Leader of the Opposition, Nayna Bandopadhyay and Asima Patra as the two Deputy Leaders of the Opposition and Firhad Hakim as the Chief Whip of Trinamool Congress’ Legislative Party in West Bengal Assembly.
However, Speaker Bose insisted on submitting along with the letter a resolution carrying the signatures of the Trinamool Congress legislators endorsing the names of these four party MLAs as nominated for the four Assembly posts reserved for the Opposition in the state Assembly.
Controversies started thereafter, as two Trinamool Congress legislators namely Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha, pointed out the mismatches in the signatures of certain legislators in that resolution, following which the Assembly Secretariat directed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the West Bengal Police to probe the matter.
The CID had already sent two summons for questioning to Abhishek Banerjee in the matter.
After he missed the first summons to be present at the CID office by 12 noon on June 1, on the same evening the CID had sent him a second summon for appearing at the CID’s office on June 8.
In the middle of such controversy, Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday wrote a second letter to the office of the Assembly Speaker endorsing the same names for the four Assembly posts reserved for the Opposition in the state Assembly.
In his second letter, Abhishek Banerjee had requested the Office of the Speaker to accept the names mentioned in the letter, especially that of Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Leader of the Opposition, as per the traditions followed by the state Assembly since 2001.
On Tuesday, Trinamool Congress legislators, Kunal Ghosh and Asima Patra visited the office of the Assembly Speaker to handover the letter from Abhishek Banerjee to the Speaker.
However, since Speaker Bose was not present in the Assembly then, his Secretary refused to accept the letter without the consent of the Speaker.
Later, the two Trinamool Congress legislators left the Assembly premises keeping the letter on the table of the Speaker.
(IANS)
