Luck smiled on Ruchika Gupta, wife of Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLA Vivek Gupta, when she recently won a ₹1 crore lottery. However, a row has erupted, with Opposition parties in the State raising questions over the frequency with which leaders of the ruling party are hitting the jackpot. Only a few months ago, there were reports of the TMC’s Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal winning a lottery of ₹1 crore.
Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly and BJP MLA from Nandigram, Suvendu Adhikari, is among those who have raised the issue. “I’ve been saying this all along, that Dear (Bhaipo) Lottery & TMC (Trinamool Congress) have a tangled relationship. It’s an easy way to launder money. Common people buy tickets but TMC leaders win bumper prize. First Anubrata Mondal won the jackpot & now TMC MLA Vivek Gupta’s wife has won 1 crore,” Mr. Adhikari tweeted on Friday.
Photographs of Mr. Mondal, who remains behind bars for his alleged involvement in a cross border cattle smuggling scam, claiming that he had won ₹1 crore in a lottery, surfaced in January this year.
Advertisements of Ms. Gupta winning the lottery surfaced in newspapers a few weeks ago, in which she said that winning the lottery brought “positive energy and vibration” along with ₹1 crore to the bank account.
Mr. Adhikari said he had written a letter to Union Home Minister Amit Shah in November 2021 in which he alleged that West Bengal had become a big market for lottery companies and a share of the crores of rupees generated from them was going the State’s ruling party.
State BJP president Sukanta Majumdar also spoke in a similar vein and said the truth would emerge only after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) began a proper investigation into the matter.
Sources in the ED said that the company running the lottery was already under the scanner.
The development has come to fore at a time when the State’s ruling party is feeling the heat of probes by Central agencies in several scams. The Trinamool Congress leadership has tried to distance itself from the lottery wins and said they had nothing to do with politics.
“If somebody is making false claims about income, it’s the work of the Income Tax Department. What has Suvendu Adhikari got to do with this?” State Minister and TMC leader Firhad Hakim said.
Mr. Gupta, an MLA from the Jorasanko constituency in north Kolkata, said it was unfortunate to target a private citizen. “If action is taken, then it should be against the one lakh people who bought the ticket,” Mr. Gupta said. The Trinamool MLA, who was earlier nominated by the party to the Rajya Sabha, and owns a Kolkata-based Hindi newspaper, said that his “fault” was that his wife had bought a lottery ticket.
