KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday permitted Trinamool Congress’ state General Secretary Kunal Ghosh to accompany West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on her coming tour to the UK where she will deliver a lecture at a college affiliated to the Oxford University.
Ghosh, who was convicted in the multi-crore Saradha Group chit fund scam, is currently out on bail. The prime condition of that bail was that he was required to submit his passport to the court.
On Wednesday, his counsel approached the High Court’s division bench of Justice Debangshu Basak and Justice Smita Das to get his passport freed so that he could accompany the Chief Minister.
Hearing the matter, the division bench raised questions about his source of funds to bear the expenses of his overseas tour. Thereafter, Ghosh’s counsel informed the court that his client would not be accompanying the Chief Minister as a Trinamool leader but as a representative of a newspaper with whom he is attached.
The division bench then directed Ghosh’s counsel to refer to that point in the documents of the petition. After the point was referred to in the documents, it gave conditional approval to Ghosh’s foreign tour.
Ghosh was directed to submit an amount of Rs 5 lakh to the court before leaving the country as a deposit. The tenure of his trip was also fixed for a limited period between March 21 and March 30.
Besides delivering a lecture at a college affiliated with Oxford University, Banerjee is also scheduled to participate in an industry meet in London.
As per the schedule of the Chief Minister fixed so far, she will be leaving Kolkata on March 22. First, she will fly to Dubai, and from there, will be flying to London. She will be returning to Kolkata on March 29.
Chief Minister Banerjee visited the UK in 2015 too. There, she was accompanied by several members of her Cabinet, including the then-state Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who is the Chief Economic Advisor to the Chief Minister now.