TMC civic boss held, Suvendu Adhikari smells plot behind land scam case
Telegraph | 4 January 2026
East Midnapore police arrested Swapan Nayak, the Trinamool Congress chairman of Egra municipality, on Saturday on charges of illegally transferring government land, sparking a political war of words between the ruling dispensation and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari over the actual reason behind the police action.
Nayak, accused of transferring government land to private individuals, was arrested following a complaint lodged by a block land official in Egra, East Midnapore district.
Nayak was produced in the Contai chief judicial magistrate’s court, which granted him five days in police custody.
“He is in our custody. We will inquire if there are many more people behind the land scam,” said Mitun Kumar Dey, the acting superintendent of police in East Midnapore.
Although the police cited a land scam as the reason behind the Trinamool leader's arrest, multiple insiders said it was politically motivated.
“Nayak had been asked to resign from the post of chairman of the Egra municipality in November 2025 by the senior party leadership. However, he refused to do so. A no-confidence motion was then brought against Nayak last month, but he survived the vote. On the very day that he survived the no-confidence motion, the FIR was lodged against him,” a Trinamool Congress source said.
Nayak told reporters that despite Trinamool councillors bringing a no-confidence motion against him, they failed to remove him, which is why he was arrested in a fabricated case.
“This arrest is my reward for working with the Trinamool Congress for a long time,” Nayak told reporters.
Leader of the Opposition and BJP’s Nandigram MLA, Suvendu Adhikari, backed Nayak.
Adhikari alleged that it was the Trinamool's "style" to use the police to brand certain leaders as corrupt when the party wants to remove them.
“We have moral support for Swapan Nayak. As he did not surrender to Trinamool, the police were used to arrest him,” Adhikari said.
However, the local Trinamool leadership stuck to the corruption angle.
Trinamool's Contai organisational district president Pijush Kanti Panda said: “Our party does not tolerate corruption, and this is proved by the arrest of the chairman of the Egra civic body.”