As The Statesman expose on the liquor scam in West Bengal has led to significant political rumblings in the state, senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) leader Tanmay Bhattachrya said that the erstwhile Trinamool Congress (TMC) led government has carried out massive scams across multiple sources only to earn money.
“Not only in the case of liquor scam, in the case of sand, coal, iron, marble and in many other cases, state exchequer has been lost. This political party was formed to earn money from various sources,” Bhattachrya said speaking to The Statesman on Friday.
Hinting at the mass resignations that have hit the Mamata Banerjee-led party soons after it was routed in the West Bengal assembly elections, the former MLA from Dum Dum Uttar who was at a BJP party office said, “The sources have gone, the party has gone.”
What Was The Bengal Liquor Scam?
In a major revelation, The Statesman has uncovered that the liquor policy in West Bengal was changed in 2017, allegedly at the behest of Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and the party’s second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee, enabling the state to monopolise liquor distribution.
The new policy was designed in a way to twist the arms of erstwhile private wholesalers into paying levies to line Abhishek’s pockets to the tune of thousands of crores, the report pointed out.
As per the confidential report drawn up by the excise department, accessed by The Statesman, all this carving up of state revenue was carried out in the name of “averting cartelisation, transparency, equitable access of liquor to all parts of the state and promotion of consumer choice.”
The Statesman mentioned that the report has been tabled with West Bengal Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Agarwal; Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has also been briefed on the matter.