IT raids Karnataka Minister's houses, resort; Jaitley says exercise not connected with Gujarat RS polls

Bengaluru: Income Tax Department officials on Wednesday swooped down on 64 properties linked to Karnataka minister DK Shivakumar and a private resort outside Bengaluru where 44 Gujarat Congress legislators are housed and said Rs 10 crore in cash have been seized.

An I-T department official said that over Rs 10 crore cash was recovered during the raids in Karnataka and Delhi in connection with a case of alleged tax evasion involving Shivakumar, a senior Congress leader and the state Energy minister.

The exercise sparked an uproar in both the houses of Parliament where the Congress claimed that it was an attempt to terrorise the Gujarat MLAs ahead of the August 8 Rajya Sabha elections, in which senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel is fighting a close battle to retain his seat. Already six Congress lawmakers have resigned from the Congress.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley insisted that the action had no connection with the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat.

Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is one of the candidates and is facing a tough battle. Polls for 10 Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh are due to be held on August 8.

Patel accused the BJP of indulging in an "unprecedented witch-hunt" to win one Rajya Sabha seat.

The I-T Department said the timing of the search was decided well in advance.

About half-a-dozen note-counting machines have also been brought at two locations in Safdarjung Enclave in Delhi and in Hasan and Mysuru in Karnataka to count the cash.

A "good amount" of jewellery has also been recovered from a teacher's locker in a college in Bengaluru, an official said, claiming the locker is in the name of a relative of Shivakumar.

While about Rs 7.9 crore cash has been recovered from Delhi, about Rs 2.23 crore has been found at locations in the southern state, the official said.

The Income Tax Joint Commissioner said the searches were in continuation of an investigation going on for considerable time.

He maintained that the timing of the searches was decided well in advance, and that it had nothing to do with the shifting of Gujarat Congress MLAs to Karnataka.

The Congress had flown its 44 Gujarat lawmakers from Ahmedabad on July 29 and lodged them in the Eagleton resort at Bidadi, 30 km from Bengaluru.

The resort is located in the Bengaluru Rural Lok Sabha constituency, represented by Congress legislator DK Suresh, younger brother of Shivakumar, a lawmaker from the Kanakapura assembly segment in the district.

Certain investments linked to him in Singapore and few other foreign locations are also under the scanner of the department, the official said.

Some shell firms and their operatives allegedly linked to this case are also being probed, the official added.

The official said the I-T sleuths reached the Eagleton resort near Bengaluru to question the minister, who was staying there overnight after arriving late in the night to the Karnataka capital from Delhi.

The official said the department has prepared a 'panchnama' into the incident where the minister was allegedly found "tearing" pages of some loose paper sheets, when the taxmen came calling at the resort.

"The torn sheet, restored partially, is now being analysed," the official said.

Shivakumar, who was in-charge of the 44 MLAs lodged there to prevent the BJP from alleged efforts to "poach" them, was at the resort when the search took place, the official said. He was taken to his house in Bengaluru from the resort by the tax sleuths early today.

The official said a total of 39 premises of Shivakumar and his family are being raided by a team of about 120 personnel from the department with the aid of central paramilitary forces.

Twenty five other locations and premises are being a surveyed under certain sections of the Income Tax Act.

As the raids on the resort triggered angry reactions from the Congress, the I-T department said the resort is not being raided.

It said only the minister's room at the resort was "searched" and not of the MLAs from Gujarat.

The Congress alleged political vendetta by the BJP-led NDA government and forced repeated adjournments of the Rajya Sabha which wound up business much ahead of schedule because of continued slogan shouting by Congress members in the house.