Amit speaks but on cola bill in US

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Amit Mitra Calcutta, April 30: Amit Mitra finally broke his silence today. The state finance minister took care to explain the details of his trip to Las Vegas in July 2012 to attend a Saradha Group-sponsored conference. Mitra, who has not spoken on the default crisis since it surfaced, today maintained his silence on how deposit-mobilising companies mushroomed in Bengal in the last 23 months. The silence came as a surprise even to treasury bench members, but the former Ficci secretary-general wore his signature smile even as the Opposition members accused the Trinamul government of aiding and abetting the growth of companies illegally collecting deposits in the state. While the default crisis — in which lakhs of people have lost their life's savings — failed to shake him up, Mitra stood up to defend himself on his US trip, about which Opposition leader Surjya Kanta Mishra had asked a question. "Nobody except the government of West Bengal footed the bill for my trip to the US. I did not take anything from anybody. I don't consume alcohol. Even if I had a bottle of Coca-Cola, it was from my pocket," the finance minister said. "I can challenge anybody. You can call me a rude person, but you cannot question the integrity of Amit Mitra." Mitra made the comments while delivering his address during the discussion on the West Bengal Protection of Interest of Depositors in Financial Establishments Bill, which was passed by the Assembly today. In his half-hour speech, Mitra read out the bill's provisions. The bill, which was circulated among all the members, did not have any mention of the deposit crisis. "As he is the finance minister and also an economist, he should have given an explanation on why the crisis precipitated in the state, but he just kept reading the bill," said a Trinamul MLA. Ever since the default crisis broke out, Mitra has shunned questions on how the deposit mobilising companies continued their operations or what he had done as finance minister to rein them in. Mamata Banerjee was sitting behind Mitra when he gave his defence. "You have been misguided," Mitra told Mishra, before trying to launch an attack on the Opposition. For the past few days, Trinamul leaders, including industries minister Partha Chatterjee, have been trying to "expose" the CPM's "links" with groups such as Saradha in an apparent attempt to deflect attention from the growth of sham companies under the Trinamul rule. Today, Chatterjee and law minister Chandrima Bhattacharya came to the Assembly armed with copies of Dial, a ready reckoner published by CPM mouthpiece Ganashakti. The copies of Dial carried advertisements by companies running deposit mobilising schemes. Mitra too carried a file containing copies of Dial and Ganashakti where such advertisements were published. Holding up two pictures of a CPM leader — one with Saradha owner Sudipta Sen and another at a programme that Mitra claimed was organised by the group — the finance minister said: "Will the leader of the Opposition identify the former minister in the photograph? Was the party (the CPM) funded by the Saradha Group?" With the finance minister getting engaged in a war of words with CPM MLAs over Trinamul's alleged links with Saradha, the real issue of the crisis took a back seat and MLAs from the Congress and the Left took potshots at Trinamul for it's perceived connections with the group and other such sham companies. Congress MLA and former bureaucrat Sukhbilas Barma wanted to know why the state government "took money" from sham companies to buy ambulances and motorcycles. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130501/jsp/bengal/story_16847320.jsp#.UYKUmqKBlA0