Demolition of Abhishek Banerjee’s party office in Bengal’s Amtala continues on Sunday

Kolkata: The demolition work of the five-storey party office of Trinamool Congress general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee at Amtala in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal continued on Sunday.

During the course of demolition, which started from Saturday afternoon, the members of the joint demolition team of officers and staff from the South 24 Parganas district administration, fire services department, district police and Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have been intrigued by the peculiar security at the five-storey party office with the signboard “Office of MP, Abhishek Banerjee”.

“Digital locks have been used on each of the floors to ensure the security and safety of the flats. Now the question arises why a district party office of an MP requires such highly sophisticated digital locks, which are mainly used by big officers for safe preservation of crucial and confidential documents,” said a district police officer.

In fact, he added, the demolition team had to deploy specialised staff from the state fire services department to physically break open the digital locks.

The local people have started alleging that since crucial documents relating to several cases of illegal land grabbing in the district, as well as documents related to the ‘Sebaashray’ health camp, a brainchild of Abhishek Banerjee, were stored at that party office, the use of digital locks was necessary.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that the members of the demolition team have brought out some trunks, reportedly filled with files, which were stored in some rooms within the building. However, the state police officials are tight-lipped about the nature of the documents that were stored in the trunks.

The demolition work started after Trinamool Congress leadership reportedly failed to reply to two consecutive notices served by the district administration to clarify the charges on the portions of the building being illegally constructed.

However, Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, has described the demolition exercise as illegal and even threatened to go to the Supreme Court against the move by the administration.

He also said on Saturday that all the party offices of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be demolished similarly once the Trinamool Congress returns to power after the 2031 West Bengal Assembly polls.

IANS