Mamata attacks BJP on Vadra's quizzing by ED, says 'Centre sending notices deliberately ahead of polls'

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is locked in a bitter tussle with the Centre over the CBI episode in Kolkata, on Wednesday slammed the Narendra Modi government for qusetioning of Robert Vadra, brother-in-law of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, by the Enforcement Directorate in a monry laundering case.

West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee. Photo: PTI

KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is locked in a bitter tussle with the Centre over the CBI episode in Kolkata, on Wednesday slammed the Narendra Modi government for qusetioning of Robert Vadra, brother-in-law of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, by the Enforcement Directorate in a monry laundering case. The TMC chief claimed the Centre was taking such actions deliberately it ahead of the general election, due in April-May. Banerjee said the BJP would not be able to scare the Opposition by the tactics of sending notices "casually to everybody". "We will complain to the Election Commission against such trend," she said. "They (the Centre) are doing it deliberately ahead of the polls," Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat here. Banerjee also said she would be in Delhi next Wednesday and Thursday, where the Opposition parties would make a decision on their future course of action. Vadra was Wednesday questioned by the ED in connection with a money-laundering probe into alleged possession of illegal foreign assets, days after his wife, Priyanka Gandhi, was formally inducted into the party. On Tuesday, Banerjee alleged that the BJP is "blackmailing" people by using central agencies like the CBI against them and then getting them into the party fold. She said she has "great respect" for the CBI and urged it to speed up its probe into theft of the Nobel medal of Rabindranath Tagore with the same alacrity with which, she alleged, the agency executes the orders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP national president Amit Shah. She said once the people who are being blackmailed by the BJP join the saffron party, the cases lodged against them by the central agencies are dismissed. "Once you join the BJP, then there will be no cases. There will be no CBI, no ED, no I-T (Income Tax Department) against you," she said.