Former Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly and a founding member of the Trinamool Congress, Pankaj Banerjee, passed away late on Friday.

Banerjee, 71, a three-time legislator, is survived by his wife and daughter.

A product of the student movement, Banerjee joined the Congress in the 1960s, and won his first election from the Tollygunge constituency in South Kolkata in 1972.

A marine engineer by profession, he later won from the same constituency in 1996 on a Congress ticket, and in 2001 as a candidate of the Trinamool Congress.

With the Trinamool emerging as the largest opposition party in 2001, Banerjee became the leader of the opposition, and served in that capacity till 2006.

However, he surprisingly announced his retirement from politics in 2006, in the run up to the assembly polls, citing poor health.

But many still believe that Banerjee had called it quits over some differences with party supremo Mamata Banerjee.

The leader’s death, however, saw a high drama.

After a private hospital announced his death, and his ‘body’ was brought home, a family doctor examined him and claimed that his heart was beating.

By then, the Chief Minister had twitted a condolence message expressing her shock over Banerjee’s demise.

The tweet was soon erased and Banerjee was rushed to another private hospital, where doctors declared him dead.

Later, the AMRI Hospital, where Banerjee was first taken, claimed that its doctors “were under no confusion over his demise” as two ECG graphs – the first one conducted on him in the ambulance on way to the hospital – had shown flat line,” indicating “that he expired even before he had reached the hospital”.

“Since protocol demanded that if admitted, Banerjee’s body had to undergo a post-mortem examination, accompanying family and friends decided to take the body back to his residence,” the hospital said in a statement.

IANS

Thousands of Congress activists on Friday staged a noisy protest outside the CBI office in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) here, shouting anti-government slogans following the move to strip CBI Director Alok Verma of his powers.

Led by party chief Sanjay Nirupam, senior leaders including several former Ministers and ex-MPs like Eknath Gaikwad and Priya Dutt and thousands of workers joined the demonstrations carrying placards and banners with anti-BJP slogans.

Slogans of “Modi se CBI Bachao”, “Chehre pe jo laali hai, Rafale ki dalali hai” and “Chor hai, Chor hai, Narendra Modi Chor hai” rent the air outside the CBI city headquarters.

“We are opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s disgraceful and unconstitutional attempt to block the investigations into the Rafale scam by removing the CBI Director Alok Verma,” Nirupam said.

Nirupam said that the Modi government had not spared a single institution and undermined the integrity of all critical organisations including the CBI.

Besides Mumbai, the Maharashtra Congress also organised similar demonstrations in Pune and Nagpur outside the CBI offices there as part of nationwide protests.

IANS

 
Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday refused to comment on the Supreme Court order on an inquiry into the allegations against CBI Director Alok Verma by the CVC, saying it was a “process being carried out”.

“It’s a Supreme Court judgement, a process that is being carried out. I don’t want to comment on it,” Gandhi told reporters outside the Lodhi Road police station where he was briefly detained for leading a protest outside the CBI headquarters.

“But I will say that the Prime Minister acted against the Director of the CBI as a result of panic, as a result of fear, because he has helped Mr Anil Ambani with Rs 30,000 crore,” he said.

The Supreme Court earlier in the day appointed one of its former judges, Justice A.K. Patnaik, to supervise the inquiry into the allegations against Verma while giving two weeks time to the CVC to complete the probe.

IANS

The BJP on Thursday hit back at Congress President Rahul Gandhi accusing him of “spreading falsehood” over the issue of CBI Director Alok Verma and said that he was living in “hallucination”.

“Congress has lost all hopes of becoming relevant and it has also lost patience. And therefore in their dreams also they are dreaming only about Rafale. It appears Rahulji is living in hallucination,” HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters at the party headquarters.

“He is manufacturing lies on Rafale everyday. Today he came out with two falsehoods. The first falsehood is that the CBI Director was removed but the fact is that he was not removed. He has been sent on leave. No 1 (Verma) and No 2 (Special Director Rakesh Asthana) have been sent on leave,” he said.

The second falsehood was that “Verma was sent on leave because he was inquiring about Rafale”. “There is no inquiry. There is no case of inquiry on Rafale. He (Gandhi) says that papers were taken from his office. This is utterly fallacious, malicious and a manufactured lie,” he said.

The BJP leader’s remarks came soon after the Congress President sharpened his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying Verma was “removed in panic” midnight because he was going to begin a probe into the controversial Rafale deal that would have been “suicidal” for Modi.

Slamming the Congress, Javadekar said, “Why they are doing this? Because Congress and Gandhi think that he has lost a chance to pocket the heavy commission through his friend Sanjay Bhandari if he was the middleman.”

He said people were more mature than Rahul Gandhi. “He (Gandhi) lives in hallucination. The country has not witnessed such an immature politician. He failed in his two-minute press conference today on matter, on manner and on method,” he said.

Javadekar said Gandhi has lost civility and therefore he was “cursing” the Prime Minister day in and day out.

Accusing the Congress of having misused the CBI when it was in power, Javadekar said, “Who misused the CBI. We never interfered. Actually people are accusing us now that why we did not interfere in time. There was anarchy-like situation developing and we should have interfered earlier. But we never interfered.”

He said that even after finding out that a ‘Look Out’ circular, which was being issued to Karti Chidambaram, was leaked and even after the Aircel Maxis deal case report was found in the bedroom of erstwhile finance Minister P. Chidambaram the government had not interfered.

“The coal scam accused had easy access to the then CBI Director (Ranjit Sinha) and the case is in court. Moin Qureshi was the go between as always. And there are many cases which show tremendous interference when they used, misused and abused the CBI,” he added.