A sting operation video that purportedly shows top Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders, including some MPs and ministers in the West Bengal Cabinet, accepting huge sums in cash as favours from a fictitious business entity has squashed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's claim to probity in public life.
Curiously, Banerjee as well as others in her party have not questioned the authenticity of the video. Instead, they said it was a "conspiracy" by the Opposition to malign the TMC leadership since Assembly polls are due next month.
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Even if it is so, what is wrong with that, so long as the video is not doctored? It would be like missing the woods for the trees. The very fact that a notice has been served by a TMC leader in the Rajya Sabha under Rule 267 to discuss the use of "foreign money" in influencing voters is a direct admission of the video's authenticity. Banerjee must now come clean on the issue.
Meanwhile, the law must take its course. This includes disqualifying the MPs and MLAs appearing in the video from their membership of the central and state legislatures, besides initiating criminal proceedings against them.
Remember that Banerjee had once demanded George Fernandes' resignation as defence minister after a similar sting operation had allegedly shown a senior functionary accepting bribe at the official residence of the minister. She had stepped down as minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Union Cabinet on that issue, though only to return to its fold after her party was drubbed in the Assembly polls in West Bengal the same year.
S K Choudhury, Bengaluru
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