Abhishek Banerjee, Trinamul Congress national general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP, who is spear heading the party’s stir in Delhi over pending central funds, today moved a Division Bench of Calcutta High Court challenging the single bench order of justice Amrita Sinha directing the central agency to take care that its probe against Mr Banerjee continues “unhindered”.

The Division Bench of justice Soumen Sen and Justice Uday Kumar, asked the counsel of the Trinamul MP on whether ED was informed beforehand that Mr Banerjee would skip the summons issued to him by ED today.
The counsel replied that the agency was informed today, in response to which the divi- sion bench asked why had Mr Banerjee not intimated the central agency in advance.
The hearing has however, been postponed till tomorrow. Mr Banerjee’s counsel noted that his client was issued a summons by the ED in a case to which he was not
a party to.

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The counsel in his argument also contended that Mr Banerjee was issued sum-mons by the central agency whenever, he was preoccupied with his political obligations. Besides, the counsel also tried to argue that the Court had changed the Investigation officer ( IO) in this case.

The Enforcement Department (ED) told the court that Mr Banerjee has the option to appear at the agency’s Salt Lake office on Wednesday for interrogation in connection with the multi-crore cash-for-school job case in West Bengal.

Justice Amrita Sinha, in a ruling on 25 September had asked the ED to submit report entailing details of Mr Banerjee’s assets of his 188A Harish Mukherkee Road resi- dence, which Justice Sinha had observed was incomplete and also handed a reprimand to the ED, observing it was as if it were suppressing the facts.