The Calcutta High Court declined to let the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC operate four more frozen bank accounts, holding its July 9 Special Officer arrangement, upheld by the Supreme Court, already protects the party.
Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday declined to pass any further interim order permitting the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress to operate four additional bank accounts frozen by the West Bengal Police, holding that its earlier July 9 arrangement which allows the party to meet its day-to-day expenses through a court-appointed Special Officer, and which the Supreme Court has since upheld already protects the party’s essential functioning, and that a broader order now would undercut that very arrangement [All India Trinamool Congress v. State of West Bengal and Others].
Justice Saugata Bhattacharya was hearing a writ petition in which Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy, for the TMC, submitted that four more of the party’s bank accounts had been frozen by the State police’s Cyber Cell on July 7, in connection with the same FIR that underlay the earlier freezing. The four accounts are reported to hold around ₹804 crore. The allegations and submissions recorded below are those made by the parties before the Court; nothing has been adjudicated, and the underlying criminal case remains at the investigation stage.
‘The same FIR for all the freezing’
Opening the party’s case, Guruswamy urged the Court to examine the first information report, submitting that the fresh freezing rested on the identical foundation as the accounts already before the Court:
“Please look at the FIR. It is the same FIR on the basis of which all these accounts have been frozen.”
Justice Bhattacharya, however, pointed to the framework he had already put in place. He observed that his July 9 order had permitted operation of certain accounts only for day-to-day expenses under the supervision of a Special Officer, and that beyond that limited purpose the accounts were not to be operated. In that situation, he indicated, no further order was required merely because additional accounts had now been frozen.
The party’s argument: a party cannot run on ‘rent and salary alone’
Guruswamy pressed that the relief already granted, while welcome, did not capture the full range of a political party’s constitutionally protected activities. She acknowledged that the earlier order covered salaries and rent expenses the Special Officer could assess and clear but submitted that a party incurs other expenditure that is equally part of its functioning:
“A political party cannot function on rent and salary payments alone. It also has to organise rallies and carry out other political activities.”
She went further on the political stakes, submitting that “at present, Bengal is effectively functioning without an opposition,” and that the freezing of the party’s accounts struck at its ability to operate. To that, Justice Bhattacharya responded that it was precisely to ensure the party could continue to function that the Court had passed its earlier order — framing the July 9 arrangement as the very mechanism designed to keep the party running while the criminal process continued.
The challenge to the FIR
Guruswamy also mounted a challenge to the legal foundation of the case, contending that the invocation of organised-crime provisions was untenable. She submitted that an organised-crime charge could not stand unless there were at least two complaints or chargesheets registered against the same person, and argued that the FIR was, on that footing, “completely untenable,” pointing out that a former Chief Minister was being accused in an organised-crime case. She indicated the party would demonstrate the FIR’s alleged infirmity once pleadings were complete: “I will show how untenable this FIR is.”
Justice Bhattacharya, without ruling on that contention, cautioned the party about a parallel and more pressing front. He observed that the TMC must first protect its position before the Election Commission a reference to the connected dispute over the party’s control between the Banerjee faction and a rebel group remarking that otherwise “there may be nothing left to protect here.”
The State’s allegations
Opposing any further relief, the Additional Advocate General submitted that the freezing was grounded in material disclosed during investigation. He told the Court that the report reflected substantial cash transactions which, according to the State, may represent proceeds of crime pointing to around ₹7 crore in cash and a reference to a further ₹10 crore cash deposit. He further submitted that from one of the accounts the party now sought to have de-frozen, around ₹30 crore had been transferred to Leaps and Bounds, a company the State said had been chargesheeted in the school-recruitment scam case. These are the State’s submissions, advanced in opposition to the plea, and remain untested allegations at this stage.
The AAG also placed before the Court the procedural history of the earlier freezing that the three private-bank accounts had been frozen by the Enforcement Directorate, that the party’s challenge had travelled through another Bench and up to the Supreme Court, and that the Supreme Court had ultimately upheld Justice Bhattacharya’s July 9 arrangement. On the fresh accounts, he clarified that these had been frozen only by the State police.
The Court declines further relief
The Bench returned repeatedly to the logic of its earlier order. Justice Bhattacharya observed that if he were now to pass a broader order allowing operation of the four accounts, it would be inconsistent with and would “fault” his July 9 order, the integrity of which the Supreme Court had affirmed. He put to Guruswamy that even if the party were allowed to operate the accounts, little would remain to be decided finally, and reiterated that the considerations which had weighed with the Court in framing the earlier interim arrangement continued to hold.
Confirming that the TMC would be permitted to operate the accounts in terms of the arrangement already recognised by both the High Court and the Supreme Court, the Court held that no further interim direction was warranted. Guruswamy, while pressing that the issue of the party’s wider political expenses and the tenability of the FIR would be argued fully after affidavits were exchanged, accepted the position, telling the Court the party would argue the matter fully in due course. Dictating the order, Justice Bhattacharya recorded that no further order needed to be passed in the writ petition for interim measures, with the matter to proceed to a full hearing after the exchange of affidavits.
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Background
The dispute traces to a complaint lodged in June 2026 by a rebel TMC MLA with the Bidhannagar Cyber Crime Police, alleging that funds had been routed through the party’s accounts by way of illicit proceeds and suspicious transactions. An FIR followed, on the basis of which the Enforcement Directorate registered an Enforcement Case Information Report and, in July, froze three of the party’s private-bank accounts said to hold around ₹440 crore. On July 9, Justice Bhattacharya declined to lift the freeze entirely but, finding insufficient material at the interim stage to justify a freeze imposed within a day of the FIR, appointed former Calcutta High Court judge Justice Subrata Talukdar as Special Officer until September 30, 2026, to oversee the operation of the accounts strictly for the party’s day-to-day and legal expenses. The Supreme Court, hearing cross-appeals filed by the TMC and the rival faction, upheld that arrangement in August.
The present proceedings concern a further tranche of four accounts, frozen by the State police, that the party says rest on the same FIR. The litigation runs against the backdrop of an intra-party contest for control of the Trinamool Congress between the Mamata Banerjee-led faction and a dissident group a contest also playing out before the Election Commission and forms part of a broader cluster of proceedings, including a separate matter in which the Enforcement Directorate has sought a CBI investigation into the alleged obstruction of its searches at the office of the party’s poll consultancy. Nothing in the present matter has been finally decided; the freezing, the allegations of tainted transactions, and the challenge to the FIR all remain to be tested when the Court takes up the petition after affidavits are filed.
For the Petitioner (TMC): Menaka Guruswamy, Sr. Adv.
For the State: Additional Advocate General
CASE: ALL INDIA TRINAMOOL CONGRESS AND ANR Vs STATE OF WEST BENGAL AND ORS, WPA/20410/2026
