The ED maintained that “no premises of any political party has been raided.” However, I-PAC has been closely associated with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) since 2020 and is widely known to be managing its election strategy for the upcoming polls.
The first dates back to February 3, 2019, when the CBI attempted to question then Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in connection with the Saradha chit fund probe. The move led to a dramatic standoff between the CBI and the state police. Mamata Banerjee arrived at the officer’s residence, later staging a dharna accusing the agency of acting on political instructions. The episode unfolded weeks before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The second occurred on February 23, 2021, barely three months before the West Bengal Assembly polls. Mamata Banerjee visited the residence of her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, shortly before a CBI team arrived to examine his wife, Rujira Banerjee, in the coal smuggling case. Images of the Chief Minister’s presence at the family home ahead of a federal probe once again brought Centre–state tensions into sharp focus.
The third episode is the present I-PAC raid - once again unfolding in the run-up to a crucial election, once again marked by the Chief Minister’s on-the-spot intervention, and once again raising allegations that enforcement agencies are being deployed as political tools.
What the data and defections suggest -
Several high-profile cases reinforce this narrative. Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren was arrested by the ED in January 2024, months before the state’s assembly elections. He resigned, fought the polls later that year, and returned to office with a renewed mandate. Similarly, former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was arrested in March 2024 in the alleged liquor policy case, just weeks before the Lok Sabha elections.
Equally telling are cases where investigations appear to have slowed after political realignment - a phenomenon critics describe as the “washing machine” effect, a phrase popularised by Mamata Banerjee.
In West Bengal, BJP Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari is named in the same Narada sting FIR that led to the arrest of several senior TMC leaders, including Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, in May 2021. Adhikari had left the TMC in December 2020 and joined the BJP amid corruption allegations.
In Maharashtra, former Congress Chief Minister Ashok Chavan joined the BJP in February 2024. He had earlier been named in the Adarsh Housing Society case, with a CBI chargesheet filed in 2012. The political implications of his defection were widely noted.
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