Kolkata:
Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy today threatened a CPI-M minister to file a defamation suit if he failed to apologise publicly for claiming that the party was using black money even as West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee dared the party to do so.
Roy, through counsels, sent the notice during the day to Housing Minister Gautam Deb for accusing him and party chief Mamata Banerjee of using black money in the election corpus and threatened to file the defamation suit if he did not apologise, Roy's lawyers Bipul Kundalia and Rajdeep Majumdar told PTI here.
The notice said that if Deb did not reply and did not apologise publicly for the derogatory comments, civil defamation as well as criminal defamation would be filed.
The chief minister, however, threw a challenge to the Trinamool Congress saying, "Let them do so if they have the guts. We are ready."
Bhattacharjee, at an election meeting at Bijpur alleged that the Trinamool Congress was using huge moneypower and helicopters for campaigning.
"I have never seen such show of money power. Advertisements were given to newspapers, television and one person is moving around in a helicopter," he said apparently referring to Trinamool supremo, Mamata Banerjee.
"Ours is a poor party which cannot afford to spend such huge amounts of money like the Trinamool Congress which uses money supplied by dishonest and unscrupulous people," he said.
"I have never touched black money and I will not touch it in future," he averred.
Meanwhile, Governor M K Narayanan said on the sidelines of a charity auction here that the voting process should be free of corruption.
"We do not want a corrupt voting process," Narayanan said.
About allegations of corruption raised by political parties against each other, he said that these allegations were always raised. "I am not sure whether the allegations are true or not."
The chief minister also took a swipe at the opposition party for the presence of Trinamool Congress candidate from Bijpur constituency Subhransu Roy, son of union minister Mukul Roy, who was arrested yesterday for assaulting EC officials from an election meeting addressed by Mamata Banerjee.
"Knowing the charge against Roy, how was he allowed to sit on the stage?" Bhattacharjee asked referring to the presence of the candidate at the election meeting at Naihati in North 24-Parganas.
"They don't obey the rule of law. They don't obey anything," he remarked.
Subhranshu Roy was denied bail and remanded to a day's jail custody by a local court.