Trinamool keeps its doors open for Partha Chatterjee: 'He can return to party if...'

Addressing the media, the party's national general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, said that Chatterjee can come back if found not guilty in the SSC recruitment scam.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) may have taken stern action against scam accused Partha Chatterjee, but the party also kept its doors open for the now-former Bengal cabinet minister, provided he comes out innocent in the multi-crore SSC recruitment scam.

TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee addressing media on Thursday. (ANI)

“He has been suspended for the duration of the investigation. He can come back if proven not guilty,” Abhishek Banerjee, the Trinamool's national general secretary, and the party's number 2 behind his aunt and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, said on Thursday, in a press conference.

The Diamond Harbour MP was speaking to the media shortly after Mamata Banerjee, who is also the ruling party's supremo, removed Chatterjee from all his ministerial positions in the wake of his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and recovery of crores of rupees from him and his aide, actor Arpita Mukherjee.

Meanwhile, responding to actor and BJP leader Mithun Chakraborty's claim that as many as 38 TMC legislators were in contact with the saffron party, Abhishek Banerjee laughed it off, saying the former Trinamool leader would not even know how many assembly constituencies and districts does the eastern state have.

“He just wants to brag about how big a leader he has become. If he wants to make a mockery of himself, then so be it,” the 34-year-old politician said, according to news agency ANI.

Chakraborty, who joined the BJP ahead of last year's assembly elections, and had famously described himself as a ‘cobra’, made the statement regarding TMC legislators on Wednesday.