Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday accused Enforcement Directorate officials of attempting to seize sensitive Trinamool Congress (TMC) data, including campaign strategies and candidate lists, during an ED raid at the residence of a top political consultant.

The searches targeted the Loudon Street home of Pratik Jain, head of the Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), which manages the TMC’s digital and IT infrastructure. Banerjee, who arrived at the scene as the operation was underway, denounced the move as an unconstitutional assault on political sovereignty.

“They are trying to take our party's hard disk, strategy and plans. Is it the duty of the ED to collect political parties' documents?” the chief minister asked after emerging from Jain's residence.

In a sharp escalation of rhetoric, Banerjee directly blamed Union Home Minister Amit Shah for the operation, describing it as an act of intimidation ahead of the state's upcoming elections.

“This is not law enforcement, this is political vendetta,” Banerjee told reporters. “The home minister is behaving like the nastiest home minister, not someone who protects the country.”

The ED also conducted simultaneous searches at the I-PAC corporate office in Salt Lake. While Banerjee alleged the agency was targeting her party's internal strategies, the ED has not issued a formal statement. However, sources familiar with the probe indicated the raids were part of a money-laundering investigation into a multi-state "fake government job" scam.

Banerjee claimed the seizure of digital material had no relevance to any financial investigation and accused the central government of using investigative agencies to access her party’s confidential planning.

Neither I-PAC nor the Enforcement Directorate had commented on the specifics of the investigation by Thursday afternoon.

With inputs from PTI