Abhishek Banerjee To Skip INDIA Meet To Appear Before Agency On Wednesday

Senior Trinamool leader Abhishek Banerjee on Monday confirmed that he will appear before the ED on September 13 as summoned by the central agency.

Mr Banerjee, who is virtually the number two in the party, replied in the affirmative when asked whether he would comply with the ED's summons.

"Yes," was his brief reply when PTI asked him.

On Sunday, the Trinamool leader posted on 'X' that he has been served a notice by the central probe agency to appear before it on September 13 for questioning.

As the day coincides with the first coordination committee meeting of the opposition bloc 'INDIA', of which he is a member, Mr Banerjee will skip its first meeting to appear before the Enforcement Directorate, party sources said.

The meeting is slated to be held in Delhi.

"First meet of INDIA's coordination committee is on September 13 in Delhi, in which I am a member. But, @dir_ed conveniently served me a notice just now to appear before them on the very same day! One can't help but marvel at the timidity & vacuousness of the 56-inch chest model," Mr Banerjee posted in a veiled attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The summons to the Trinamool MP comes weeks after the central probe agency conducted raids in the office of ‘Leaps and Bounds Pvt Ltd' in the city in connection with the school jobs scam. The ED claimed that Mr Banerjee is the chief executive officer of the company.

He had earlier been summoned by the ED several times in connection with a cattle smuggling case. The Trinamool leader declined to appear before the central probe body when it had sent a notice to him in June in connection with the investigation into the money trail in the primary school jobs scam in West Bengal. Citing his busy schedule in the then mass outreach campaign and the July panchayat poll in the state, Mr Banerjee had said that he will be available any time after the rural election.

The Trinamool leader had faced nine hours of questioning by the CBI in the scam in May.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)