Kolkata: Two ministers of West Bengal cabinet, Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim were arrested by CBI on Monday morning in connection with the Narada Sting operations conducted by Mathew Samuel to expose the high-profile Trinamool Congress leaders and ministers accepting bribes in front of camera against promises of favours.
Also arrested were Trinamool Congress legislator, Madan Mitra and former BJP leader Sovan Chatterjee.
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Chatterjee was earlier with the Trinamool Congress and later shifted to the BJP. However, his sting with the BJP was very short and he quit the saffron camp after being denied a ticket in the recently concluded West Bengal polls. His 'close friend' Baishakhi Bandopadhyay also parted ways with the BJP.
Of the four arrested, Mukherjee, Chatterjee and Hakim were former mayors of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC). Chatterjee was once an extremely close confidante of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, He first became the councillor of KMC after winning from Ward Number 131 in Behala. In 2000, he was given the charge of mayor-in-council (water) of Trinamool- controlled KMC. He continued in the post till 2005. In 2010, he became the mayor of KMC and served in that post for a long time. But his alleged love affair with Baishakhi soured his relations with both his family members and the TMC. On November 22, 2018, he resigned as the mayor of Kolkata.
Banerjee made one of her other confidantes Hakim, then not an elected councillor, the mayor thereafter. On November 24, 2018, he got elected as a councillor and became the first Muslim mayor of KMC. The term of the board was about to end on May 7, 2020. However, due to COVID-19, elections for the new KMC board could not be conducted. Hakim was then appointed as the chairman of the board of administrators of KMC. ON March 22, 2021, he resigned from the post.
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Prior to Chatterjee and Hakim, Mukherjee had successfully served as the mayor of Kolkata. He switched over to the Trinamool Congress from the Congress in 1999 and in 2000 he became the mayor. He was also an elected Congress MLA then and he carried on with both his posts simultaneously. He nurtured a dream of raising the 300-feet long Kolkata Gate at Eastern Metropolitan Bypass. However, it could not be fulfilled owing to objections from the State Pollution Control Board.
