CM Sharpens Attack On Taratala Warehouse Collapse, Says No One Will Be SparedKolkata: “If the pen is Firhad Hakim, the inkpot is Mamata Banerjee. If the pen goes, the inkpot will also have to go. Everyone will have to go together,” chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said in the assembly on Monday, training guns on his predecessor while linking the ex-CM with the Taratala warehouse collapse.The remarks came days after the arrest of Kalicharan Banerjee alias Kali (which means ink in Bengali) — the former officer on special duty to former mayor Hakim — in connection with the tragedy that killed 16 labourers and exposed alleged irregularities in the construction of the warehouse.Responding to opposition demands that Hakim should also be arrested, Adhikari said the govt would proceed only on the basis of evidence. “This govt will not do anything without evidence. We are gathering it and if there is evidence, we will spare no one,” the CM said.The “pen and inkpot” analogy first surfaced after Kali’s arrest on Thursday, with functionaries from the Mamata-loyalist faction of Trinamool arguing that it was not enough to arrest only the ex-OSD. MLA Kunal Ghosh and MP Kalyan Banerjee publicly demanded action against Hakim, with Kalyan saying that “after Kali, the pen should also be arrested”.The collapse has triggered claims of large-scale corruption in the approval and execution of the project after flaws allegedly emerged in the sanctioned building plan. Police arrested Kalicharan shortly after the CM criticised him in the assembly on Thursday, intensifying speculation that the investigation could widen further.Reacting to the CM’s comment, Kunal said: “It wasn’t us but the chief minister himself who had said in the assembly that the ex-mayor had signed the faulty plan and none will be spared. Are the goalposts being shifted because Hakim is in the other (rebel Trinamool) camp?”Also on Monday, while backing two bills aimed at curbing extortion and dismantling criminal gangs, Adhikari accused the former CM of blurring the line between constitutional governance and vote-bank politics.Without naming Mamata directly, Adhikari said she had failed to distinguish between a CM’s constitutional responsibilities and electoral considerations. Expanding his attack, Adhikari blamed both the previous TMC and Left Front govts for criminalisation of politics in Bengal.He alleged that organised political violence first entered the state’s electoral landscape under CPM, referring to the emergence of the “Harmad Bahini” after the 2000 Panskura Lok Sabha bypoll. The CM also accused the previous regime of pursuing minority appeasement, claiming that communal unrest since 2019 had devastated public infrastructure, businesses and residential neighbourhoods.Questioning why compensation had never been recovered from those accused of vandalism during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the Waqf Act in places such as Dhuliyan, Adhikari said his govt was committed to enforcing accountability.“Listen to what the previous govt did. There was a minister in the previous govt. This time, he lost in Monteswar. In 2019, he was the first to bring innocent children onto the streets in Burdwan. After seeing this, Mamata said, ‘CAA, CAA, chi chi’. There was no problem anywhere else in the country. But Mamata led a march from Sinthi More to Shyambazar. She came onto the streets, misled people and fuelled the unrest. The whole of Bengal burned because of it,” Adhikari said.Returning to the Taratala probe, Adhikari reiterated that investigators would “spare no one” if evidence established culpability, regardless of political position.
