All India Trinamool Youth Congress chief Abhishek Banerjee on Wednesday filed a defamation complaint against Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah, accusing him of making slanderous statements, PTI reported. He is a Lok Sabha MP and the nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The eighth bench of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Kolkata said it will hear the matter on September 28.
Abhishek Banerjee accused Shah of defaming him at a public rally in Kolkata on August 11. The BJP president had alleged that the Centre’s aid of Rs 3.59 lakh crore to West Bengal ended up with some syndicates and Abhishek Banerjee. He had also accused the Trinamool Congress of spreading scams in the state despite coming to power on the poll promise of uprooting corruption.
On August 13, Abhishek Banerjee sent a legal notice to Shah on the matter and demanded an apology. The notice to Shah, which denied the BJP president’s claims, said, “In the course of your speech you had made various allegations against my client [Abhishek Banerjee] by making a flimsy and thinly veiled reference and/or insinuation to the ‘bhatija’ (nephew) of the chief minister of the state of West Bengal.”
The TMC youth chief’s lawyer, Sanjay Basu, alleged the “false statements” caused grave loss and prejudice to his client’s reputation. The petition asked the court to direct Shah to desist from making or circulating defamatory statements against Abhishek Banerjee.
BJP allegations
On August 2, the Bharatiya Janata Party said that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee must resign if she cannot answer the corruption charges against her nephew. Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar accused Abhishek Banerjee of illegally taking Rs 1.15 crore from a realtor.
Abhishek Banerjee allegedly received the sum from Raj Kishore Modi when the former was the director of a firm called Leaps and Bounds Pvt Ltd. The realtor is already under investigation for an alleged land grab and other criminal activities.
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra had accused the chief minister of endorsing nepotism. He said the underlying truth of TMC’s slogan ‘Maa, Mati Manush’ was ‘Aami, Aamar, Aamar parivar [Me, Mine, My family]’ for her”.
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