From rallies to booth management, I-PAC is critical for Trinamool. Will its exit hurt the party?

“Why fuss over I-PAC like this?” an irritated Shashi Panja asked reporters at a Trinamool Congress news conference in Kolkata on Sunday when they inquired about a report in the Deccan Herald that the political consultancy had paused operations in West Bengal. Her reaction summed up her party’s confused position on the issue.

On the one hand, the cabinet minister from Bengal dismissed the report as “baseless”. On the other, she criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party for purportedly using Central investigative agencies to go after the Trinamool’s election consultant.

Panja claimed that her party was in close contact with the Indian Political Action Committee and that the consultancy was ensuring that the Trinamool’s campaign was “in full swing”.

However, according to an email that I-PAC’s human resources department sent out in the early hours of Sunday, all the company’s employees in West Bengal were asked to go on leave for 20 days with immediate effect. Scroll has seen this email, which says that the decision had been taken because of “certain legal issues”.

I-PAC has been on the radar of the Enforcement Directorate since January. The Central investigative agency has, in recent weeks, raided its offices in several cities and summoned its three directors for questioning. On April 14, it even arrested one of...

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