Congress slams tax raids on Karnataka minister
Bengaluru, Aug 2 (IANA) Karnataka’s ruling Congress slammed the searches by Income Tax officials on Wednesday at multiple locations of state Energy Minister D.K. Shivakumar, terming it an attempt to intimidate and defame the party.
“The tax raids on our senior minister’s home in the city, at a resort near here and in his house in New Delhi are politically motivated to silence our voice against the BJP,” said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in a statement hours after the raids began.
Terming the day-long raids a political vendetta, he vowed not to bow down to such intimidation and expose the NDA central government’s “political conspiracies” to defame his party and government.
“The central government’s role behind the IT raids targeting Shivakumar and his aides is clear and their timing suspect, as they were being done without any case or notice. The IT officials should have taken help from local police than asking the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel to provide security to them,” he said.
Amid high drama, about 100 tax sleuths conducted simultaneous searches at Shivakumar’s posh multi-story house here, at a deluxe room in Eagleton Gold Resort at Bidadi, about 30km from here, where he was staying since July 30 and at his residence at Safdarjung in south Delhi.
Shivakumar has been staying at the resort since Sunday to host the 44 Congress lawmakers from Gujarat, flown in on July 29 to prevent them from being poached by the rival BJP ahead of the Rajya Sabhl bye-poll on August 8 in which party’s senior leader Ahmed Patel is contesting.
Hundreds of Youth Congress activists and party cadres staged protests against the IT Department and raised slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at Shivakumar’s home in the city and Kanakapura and at the party’s office here.
Accusing the central government of misusing its tax machinery for political ends, Shivakumar’s younger brother D.K. Suresh, a Lok Sabha member from the Bengaluru Rural, told reporters here that Modi and Shah directed the IT raids against his brother, him and party lawmaker C Ravi.
“It is shocking that such a raid was carried out when our Gujarat MLAs were at the resort as our guests and to stay away from being influenced or intimated by the rival BJP ahead of the Rajya Sabha bye-poll on Friday.