Kolkata: Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram faced protests from lawyers aligned with his own party — who called him a Trinamool Congress (TMC) “stooge” — outside the Calcutta High Court Wednesday afternoon.
The former Union minister had appeared in a case filed by Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury — now the state Congress chief — in 2018 against the Mamata Banerjee government’s sale of its stake in Metro Dairy to a private company, Keventer Agro Ltd. But Chidambaram was there to stand as counsel for Keventer, not his party colleague.
Kaustav Bagchi, one of the lawyers who raised slogans when Chidambaram was leaving the court, told ThePrint, “It’s because of leaders like Chidambaram that the condition of the Congress party is abysmal today. He has insulted the Congress by agreeing to fight the case on behalf of the Trinamool Congress when he is aware that the matter was filed by Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.”
Congress leaders Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Kapil Sibal have similarly faced objections from the party’s West Bengal unit for representing the Mamata Banerjee government in high-profile cases ranging from the Saradha scam to the political violence in the state following last year’s assembly election.
ThePrint tried to reach out to Chowdhury via telephone multiple times, but the calls remained unanswered. This report will be updated with his comments if he responds.
What is the Metro Diary Case?
In 2018, Congress MP Chowdhury had filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Calcutta High Court alleging a lack of transparency in the way the West Bengal government had sold off a 47 per cent stake in Metro Dairy to the sole bidder — a private company called Keventer Agro Ltd — for Rs 85 crore.
Metro Diary had been the first ever public-private partnership in India’s dairy sector and, but the TMC government sold off its stake in the venture in 2017 — its first disinvestment since coming to power in 2012.
Chowdhury in his PIL alleged that Metro Dairy had suffered a huge loss of at least Rs 500 crore because of the low price at which the government had sold off its stake to Kolkata-based Keventer Agro Ltd.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) in 2020 had not only conducted a raid at Keventer’s Kolkata office, but also summoned four top IAS officers including the H.K. Dwivedi — now West Bengal’s chief secretary — and TMC MLA Paras Dutta for questioning over alleged anomalies.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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