Supreme Court turns down Trinamool faction's plea on four frozen accounts holding ₹800 crore

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined a petition filed by the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress faction seeking permission to operate four bank accounts in public sector banks that have been debit-frozen by the West Bengal Police.

The accounts are among those that the party has said hold more than ₹800 crore in total. Under a debit freeze, deposits may continue to be credited, but withdrawals and transfers are restricted.

Appearing before a Bench headed by Justice M.M. Sundresh, the petitioner faction submitted that the first information reports (FIRs) on the basis of which the accounts were frozen suffered from glaring procedural infirmities. The Bench, however, declined to entertain the petition under its appellate jurisdiction. Instead, it requested the Calcutta High Court to expedite the hearing of the petitions filed by Ms. Banerjee's faction challenging the FIRs.

The Calcutta High Court had, on August 27, declined to grant the faction any interim relief in the matter. It reasoned that passing such an interim order would undermine an earlier direction that limited the party's access to its accounts to meeting daily or monthly expenses.

This is the second time in recent weeks that the party has approached the top court over frozen accounts. Earlier in August, the Supreme Court declined to intervene in favour of the party in respect of three other bank accounts frozen by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in connection with a money laundering investigation.

The top court decided not to interfere after learning that the High Court had already appointed Justice Subrata Talukdar, a former judge of the Calcutta High Court, as a 'Special Officer' to facilitate the operation of those three accounts for incurring day-to-day and monthly expenditure required to run the political party.

The money laundering probe concerns alleged transfers of funds to Carewell Aviation India and an associated entity between April 2023 and June 2026, purportedly in connection with the acquisition of an aircraft and a helicopter. These are allegations, and no finding of guilt has been recorded in the matter so far. The proceedings remain pending before the courts.

The developments underline the continuing overlap between the party's financial operations, police action in West Bengal and the Enforcement Directorate's investigation, with the courts so far limiting relief to the everyday running expenses of the organisation rather than unrestricted access to its funds.

The Trinamool Congress has been a party to a series of proceedings in the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court concerning both the police freeze and the ED's probe. The High Court's August 27 order, and now the top court's decision not to entertain the plea under its appellate jurisdiction, mean the faction's primary challenge to the FIRs will be heard by the High Court, which has been asked to take it up without delay.

The Supreme Court's refusal to intervene at this stage does not amount to a finding on the merits of the petitions. It leaves the questions raised by the party about the procedure followed in registering the FIRs to be examined by the High Court.