Hearing a PIL on “growing properties” of family members of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, a division bench of the Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed all parties concerned to “file affidavits on the merits of the acceptability of the petition”.
On August 29, advocate Arijit Majumdar had filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the division bench of Calcutta High Court’s Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj, seeking a probe into the assets of Banerjee’s relatives.
However, neither Mamata Banerjee nor her nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee was named in the PIL.
The petitioner demanded a probe into the “increasing properties” of the Chief Minister’s two brothers — Kartik Banerjee and Babun Banerjee — and her sister-in-law Kajari Banerjee.
Kajari Banerjee, a Trinamool Congress councillor of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, is married to Kartik Banerjee.
Advocate Prabal Mukherjee, the counsel representing the Chief Minister’s family members, argued that the petition is not admissible since the petitioner, besides being an advocate, is also an active member of the BJP, and hence, his petition was “motivated”.
In his argument, advocate Tarunjyoti Tiwari, appearing for the petitioner, said the Chief Minister’s sister-in-law had cited both business and social work as her profession.
Tiwari argued that the PIL was aimed at knowing the exact source of her income.
After hearing both sides, the bench directed both parties to file their respective arguments on the admissibility of the PIL by November 11.
The court has fixed November 28 as the next date of hearing.
