West Bengal Guv Sanctions CBI to Prosecute Top TMC Leaders

Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, on a request by the CBI, sanctioned the prosecution of Firhad Hakim, Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra and Sovan Chatterjee, all of them ministers throughout the time of the alleged fee of a criminal offense that got here to mild within the purported Narada sting tapes, a Raj Bhavan official stated on Sunday. “Honourable governor is the competent authority to accord sanction when it comes to legislation as he occurs to be the appointing authority for such ministers when it comes to Article 164 of the Constitution,” a statement issued by the officer on special duty (communication), Raj Bhavan, said.

All four were ministers in the Mamata Banerjee cabinet when the tapes were allegedly made in 2014. Hakim, Mukherjee and Mitra have been re-elected as TMC MLAs in the just-concluded assembly elections, while Chatterjee, who left the TMC to join the BJP, has severed links with both the camps.

The statement said that the sanction for prosecution of the four leaders was accorded by Dhankhar “after the CBI had made a request and made available entire documentation relevant to the case to the honourable governor and he invoked his powers under Article 163 and 164 of the Constitution, being the competent authority to accord such sanction”. The Narada sting tapes, made public earlier than the 2016 meeting elections in West Bengal, had been claimed to have been shot in 2014, whereby folks resembling TMC ministers, MPs and MLAs had been allegedly seen receiving cash from representatives of a fictitious firm in lieu of promised favours.