Kolkata, July 20 (IANS) The South 24 Parganas district administration is considering a reinvestigation into how the party office of the Trinamool Congress general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee was constructed over the land of an erstwhile bakery, which was suddenly gutted by a devastating fire in the closing quarters of 2014.
The office was partially demolished during the last couple of days before the Calcutta High Court stayed the demolition.
The district administration started the demolition on Saturday afternoon, which continued till Sunday morning. However, the demolition exercise had to be stopped after Calcutta High Court’s single-judge special bench of Justice Raja Basu Chowdhury, after an urgent hearing on Sunday afternoon, put an interim stay on further demolition till the matter is heard by a regular bench, which will take the final decision.
A senior official from the South 24 Parganas district said that demolition work was initiated after it was found that the five-story building at Amtala was constructed without a proper building sanction plan.
“Now several complaints and allegations, both from local people as well as from a section within the district administration, have surfaced regarding the mystery of the devastating fire at the bakery by the end of 2014, which was on the same land on which the same party office was constructed later. There had been several complaints that the bakery fire was actually sabotage with the intention of illegally grabbing that land. So, in view of the allegations, the district administration feels that there is a requirement for re-investigation on how the fire happened, how the ownership of the land changed and subsequently fresh construction was made on that land,” said a senior district administration official who refused to be named.
It is learnt that a detailed report on the matter will be sent by the district administration to the state secretariat soon, and the latter will take the final decision, especially whether there will be a re-investigation in the matter or not.
Local Bharatiya Janata Party leader Abhijit Das a.k.a. Bobby pointed out that in that particular area, no construction of even “G+3” is allowed without special permission from the zilla parishad. “This construction built on the erstwhile land of a bakery is G+4. The bakery was suddenly gutted by fire. Thereafter, the land was purchased by a corporate entity christened Leaps & Bounds. Thereafter, the new construction was completed at an unimaginable pace. During the previous government, there was no proper probe into the matter. Now, the new government has come into power. So, I hope that all these aspects will be investigated again now,” he added.
In fact, Das on Sunday lodged a complaint at Nodakhali police station in South 24 Parganas district against Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of the former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, alleging corruption in the distribution of financial compensation after Cyclone Amphan in 2020
He alleged that around Rs 30 crore was embezzled in the Budge Budge-II block through the creation of fake documents.
–IANS
src/dpb