Will resign if Saradha link is proved, says Mamata

Breaking her silence over the Saradha scam, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said she would quit if allegations of her closeness to the ponzi company was proved.

“Who said? You have to prove it otherwise I will resign from my side,” the Trinamool Congress chief said when asked about her party’s former MP Kunal Ghosh’s charge that she was close to the Saradha group.

Asked again if she would quit, Banerjee said, “Yes. That (accusation) is absolutely wrong I am telling you. It is CPM’s time, Left Front’s time ... 34 years not our times. We arrested the man. We set up the judicial commission. We return the Rs 5 lakh money to individuals. This is absolutely wrong.”

“No, you cannot accuse like this. First you have to prove. You have to give the evidence. It was never done in our time. It was the Left Front’s time and Congress’s time and Bharatiya Janata Party’s time,” she said.

In a wide-ranging interview to news channel Headlines Today, Banerjee also did not outrightly reject the idea of the Left joining a common platform with Trinamool Congress to fight the communal menace.

Asked whether Left and Trinamool Congress could join such a common platform at the national level, she said, “At the national level, it is a platform to fight the battle against communalism and vandalism.”

To another question on whether she would share a platform with Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Prakash Karat, she said, “That is a common minimum agenda. It is just like a platform to fight against communalism.”

However, she said the Left was “finished” in West Bengal. “They have their own ideological policy, I have my own ideological policy. That is a different question,” a statement by the TV channel quoted her as saying.