MPs’ arrest: TMC plans stir in Odisha

Kolkata: The Trinamul Congress will hold a rally in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday to protest against the arrests of two of its MPs Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Tapas Paul in connection with the Rose Valley chit fund scam.

TMC general secretary Subrata Bakshi said the protest would raise the economic policies of the Narendra Modi government and the arrest of party MPs by the CBI.

Trinamul Congress secretary general Partha Chatterjee left for Bhubaneswar on Sunday and asserted that the party would not bow down to vendetta politics.

“The Centre is pursuing vendetta politics against the state government and TMC leaders. However, we cannot be cowed down by threats and vendetta politics. Our party will not bow its head irrespective of the attacks on us. Tomorrow we will take out a protest rally at Bhubaneswar railway station. We want to expose the BJP. We want to tell people that here is a fascist party which can stoop so low to pursue its agenda of vendetta politics,” Mr Chatterjee said before leaving for Bhubaneswar where he later met the MP.

“He is doing well right now and is encouraged by our fight against the Centre’s vendetta politics. He knows that the CBI has been used to arrest him before the Budget session in Parliament so that the NDA gets the upper hand. But we will fight this politically and we will continue to protest against this,” Mr Chatterjee said.

To show solidarity to their two arrested MPs, top TMC leaders like general secretary Subrata Bakshi, Chandrima Bhattacharya and Manish Gupta also accompanied Mr Chatterjee to Bhubaneswar. After the rally, Mr Bakshi will stay back to monitor the situation and give moral support to the arrested MPs.

Meanwhile, the party's protest against its MPs continued in West Bengal after TMC workers blocked railway tracks near Shyamnagar station in the district of North 24 Parganas. North Bengal development minister Gautam Deb led a protest rally in Siliguri denouncing the Centre's move to arrest its MPs.