Chief Secretary Harikrishna Dwivedi said in a notification that Chatterjee was removed as minister-in-charge for industry, commerce and enterprises, information technology and electronics, parliamentary affairs and public enterprises and industrial reconstruction. The departments will now be under the chief minister.
According to TMC sources, Banerjee was initially reluctant to remove Chatterjee from the cabinet. But after the recovery of stashes of cash for a second time from a flat of his aide Arpita Mukherjee in Belgharia, on the outskirts of Kolkata, the party leadership decided to sack Chatterjee immediately, they said.
On Thursday, the TMC called a disciplinary committee meeting where it was expected that he would be expelled from the party also.
The Enforcement Directorate raided the former education minister’s house and detained him on July 22. The agency also conducted a search at the house of Mukherjee and recovered more than Rs 20 crore from there. Next morning, after 26 hours of interrogation, the agency arrested Chatterjee. He is now in the ED’s custody.
