Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, filed the petition in 2018, demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into what he alleged to be a scam.
Kolkata: In an embarrassing situation for the Congress, its senior leader P Chidambaram on Wednesday get heckled by party-affiliated lawyers at Calcutta high court. The lawyers, shouting slogans against the former union finance minister and one time heavyweight, were opposing him as he was representing the Trinamool Congress-led state government against a PIL filed by his own party leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in high court.
Lawyers shouted slogans and heckled him while he was leaving the Calcutta high court premises. They called him “an agent” of the TMC and asked him to ‘go back’. “He is an ‘agent’ of the ruling party at a time when party workers were struggling against its ‘atrocities’,” the agitated lawyers said.
The case pertains to the 2017 sale of the West Bengal government’s entire 47 per cent stake in Metro Dairy to Keventer Agro Ltd, the project’s sole private partner which, a short while later, transferred 15 per cent of its shares to a Singapore-based firm for a much higher price. This is the only disinvestment made by the Mamata Banerjee government since 2011, when the Trinamool Congress (TMC) first came to power.
Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, filed the petition in 2018, demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into what he alleged to be a scam. Chidambaram reached to the high court to represent Keventer Agro Ltd and sought dismissal of the PIL.
Downplaying the scene created at court premises, state Congress leaders said that there might have been some misunderstanding and one’s professional life should be kept away from one’s political life. They said that they had no information that Chidambaram was in Kolkata. They said that the lawyers became emotional and this happened. They said that Chidambaram is a very senior leader of Congress and enjoys good friendship with everyone.