‘CBI actions targeted to hinder my campaign’: Mahua Moitra to poll panel

Trinamool Congress leader and former MP Mahua Moitra wrote to the Election Commission on Sunday alleging that the CBI is “harassing” her and “throttling her election campaign efforts”.

This comes a day after the CBI teams conducted searches on the premises of the former MP in multiple locations in connection with the cash-for-query case.

Moitra, the Trinamool Congress candidate from Krishnanagar Lok Sabha seat, accused that the CBI has deliberately chosen to conduct four consecutive raids despite knowing about her candidacy.

“This was done with the sole intention of hindering my campaign process and creating a negative perception about me in the run-up to poll day,” she alleged in the letter.

She alleged that her election campaigning office and MP officer were among the premises the central probe agency “illegally raided”.

“Hence, there is no doubt that the CBI was unequivocally aware that their actions were targeted to throttle my election campaign efforts and to thereby illegally harass me,” she argued.

“Needless to mention, such a smear campaign perpetrated by the CBI has solely and unjustly enriched my political opponents at my cost and peril,” the Trinamool leader charged, adding that the “timing and methodology employed by the CBI creates at the very minimum, a sufficient amount of suspicion that they are dancing to the tunes of political dicta.”

She stressed that there is a “need for urgent issuance of guidelines/framework” regarding the conduct of investigations by central investigating agencies during the period of the Model Code of Conduct.

The CBI raids on Moitra followed an FIR registered against on Thursday on the directives of the Lokpal, which has instructed the agency to file a report within six months.

Moitra, who was a sitting MP from the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha seat, was expelled from the Lok Sabha in December for “unethical conduct” following a Parliamentary Committee probe into cash-for-vote allegations. She was accused of receiving cash for asking questions inside the House. The TMC has fielded her again from the same seat.