Mamata demands to make all central investigation agencies autonomous bodies

|HT|

Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee on Monday hit out at the recent Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raids on former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav in an alleged railway recruitment scam and said all central investigation agencies should be made autonomous bodies.

“Central agencies should be given full autonomy so that they can act impartially. The government should only give them salary. This should be the goal of new India. Only this autonomy can save India from disaster,” the West Bengal chief minister told the media after a cabinet meeting.

Directing her attack at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre, Banerjee said no probe agency should be under the offices of the Prime Minister, the Union home minister or any chief minister.

“The BJP has bulldozed the federal structure of the country,” Banerjee, who has resumed her efforts to bring regional parties on a common anti-BJP platform before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, said.

“I am sorry to say this but even Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini did not do this,” she quipped. Alleging that the CBI raid on the former Bihar chief minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president was politically motivated, Banerjee said: “The Central government is forcefully giving directions to the agencies, as we saw in the case of Lalu Prasad Yadav. What was the urgency? Was it because of the next elections? How many BJP leaders have been arrested?”

The next assembly elections in Bihar will be held in 2025, a year after the Lok Sabha polls.

The CBI recently registered a fresh case against the former Bihar chief minister and members of his family on charges of taking land from people who had applied for jobs in the railways when Lalu Prasad Yadav was heading the ministry during the UPA 1 government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The CBI has reportedly registered cases against Yadav, his wife Rabri Devi and their daughters Misa and Hema. The agency raided several locations in Delhi, Patna and Gopalganj on Friday.

RJD national general secretary Shyam Rajak welcomed Banerjee’s statement. “She has said the right thing,” Rajak said. Top Bengal BJP leaders could not be contacted as they were busy in an internal meeting when Banerjee made the statement.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)