Kolkata, Oct 28 (IANS): West Bengal Fire Services Minister Sujit Bose alleged on Saturday that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is putting pressure on his former personal assistant (PA), Nitai Dutta, to name him in the alleged multi-crore municipalities’ job scam in the state.

Dutta, presently the vice-chairman of South Dum Dum municipality, has already been questioned by the ED in connection with the case.

“Nitai (Dutta) is my former PA. He is now a councillor and also the vice-chairman of a municipality. ED officials conducted raid at his residence for 12 hours recently, but could not trace anything.Since then the central agency officials are putting pressure on him to name me in the case.

"He has also been assured of being relieved of the case if he names me. What kind of a torture is this," Bose asked while addressing a meeting.

He said the renewed activities of ED, including the latest arrest of Forest Minister Jyotipriya Mallick, started just after the end of Durga Puja when Trinamool Congress was preparing to restart its agitation programmes against the non-payment of Central dues to West Bengal government under different centrally-sponsored schemes.

“Just at a time when the Union government is under pressure because of the movement spearheaded by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee, the central agencies have become active again. They want to break the morale of our party workers through such arrests,” Bose said.