PIL filed seeking probe into 'rise in income' of 17 Oppn leaders in state

KOLKATA: A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed at the Calcutta High Court on Thursday against 17 opposition leaders, including BJP's Suvendu Adhikari, CPI(M)'s Md. Selim and Congress' Abdul Mannan, alleging an increase of assets by multifold.

Earlier on August 8 the Division Bench of Justice Prakash Shrivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj had directed to make Enforcement Directorate (ED) a party in a PIL filed against 19 leaders and ministers of Trinamool Congress. After this, a similar allegation was raised against 30 leaders of other political parties which include CPI(M), Congress and the BJP.

On Thursday the PIL was filed against 17 leaders alleging that their income has increased by multifold since they disclosed their assets through affidavits. The petitioner has appealed for an investigation by any independent investigating agency.

It is alleged that the assets of these 17 political leaders have increased manyfold in the past five to ten years. It has also been appealed to attach this PIL with the original case in which the court has asked ED to be made a party.

The 17 leaders named in the PIL are Dilip Ghosh, Locket Chatterjee, Shamik Bhattacharya, Agnimitra Paul, Saumitra Khan, Sisir Adhikari, Dibyendu Adhikari, Anupam Hazra, Jitendra Tiwary, Silbhadra Dutta, Mihir Goswami, Manoj Kumar Oraon Biswajit Sinha, Md. Selim, Tanmoy Bhattacharya and Abdul Mannan.