Reacting to the reports of ED raids, TMC leader and state Sashi Panja accused the BJP of conspiring against the party after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that her government would transfer funds to the bank accounts of 21 lakh MGNREGA workers in the state by February 21.

“After the CM announced to release funds, the BJP is shaken and doing this. It is a political vendetta. Today’s event shows that ED and CBI are being used as tools. Suvendu Adhikari [BJP MLA and Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly] has time and again threatened, and accordingly, the CBI and ED are acting,” Panja said.

“This is an attempt to divert public and media’s attention from the TMC’s ongoing dharna demanding clearance of state’s dues. This is a clear example of vendetta politics,” he added.

Adhikari, on the other hand, said that the ED’s intervention took place after the West Bengal Police failed to file a single chargesheet on more than 100 FIRs registered against some district officials and panchayat members over the issuance of fake job cards.

“Now, the net has been widely cast to book every wrongdoer. To our knowledge, a large number of BDOs, MGNREGA supervisors and TMC panchayat members are involved,” the BJP MLA of Nandigram alleged.

For the past two years, the Centre’s decision to withhold funds for several rural welfare schemes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), has been a major political issue in West Bengal. The pending dues issue has been repeatedly raked up by the TMC, which has accused the Centre of deliberately stopping the release of funds. According to the West Bengal government, Rs 6,900 crore is due to the state under MGNREGA.

The BJP, however, has alleged that the West Bengal government had issued 2.5 million fake MGNREGS job cards due to which crores of rupees of government funds were siphoned off.