Income Tax Department provisionally attaches Benami properties worth crores linked to Ajit Pawar

MUMBAI: The Income Tax (I-T) Department has issued a notice to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar informing him that it has provisionally attached several Benami properties linked to him and his family.

According to reports, the central agency has attached properties linked to the NCP leader worth over Rs 1,000 crore located in various states.

A flat valuing Rs 20 crores located in South Delhi, Parth Pawar’s office located at Nirmal House, estimated to be worth Rs 25 crores, a sugar factory in Jarandeshwar valuing around Rs 600 crores, a resort in Goa which is believed to cost around Rs 250 crores have been provisionally attached by the Benami Property Wing of the Income Tax Department.

The central agency has also provisionally attached 27 pieces of land across Maharashtra, the combined market value of which is estimated to be around 500 crores. All these properties are believed to be owned by Ajit Pawar and his family.

Ajit Pawar, the nephew of NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar, will now have 90 days to prove that the attached properties were not purchased with Benami (undisclosed and illegal) money.

Till the I-T department continues its probe into the matter, Ajit Pawar cannot sell any of these properties. Ajit Pawar is the second senior-most NCP leader who is under the scanner of central agencies for amassing huge illegal property worth several hundred crores.

Besides Ajit Pawar, senior NCP leader and former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh is also currently being probed by the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI in alleged extortion and money laundering cases.

The Income Tax (I-T) Department had last month unearthed unaccounted income worth Rs 184 crore following its searches at premises of two real estate groups in Mumbai linked to Ajit Pawar's family.

Without naming Pawar or his kin, the central tax authority said the evidence gathered by it during the searches carried out at about 70 premises spread across Mumbai, Pune, Baramati, Goa and Jaipur revealed “several prima-facie unaccounted and Benami transactions”.

“Incriminating documents evidencing unaccounted income of about Rs 184 crore of the two groups have been found,” the central agency said in a statement. On October 7, the tax agency had searched a firm where Pawar’s son, Parth, is a director; a few firms owned by Pawar’s sisters; two real estate firms linked to Pawar, and premises of directors of four sugar mills across the state reportedly indirectly linked to the Pawar family.

At the time, Pawar had said he had no problem with the searches against him but was upset that his sisters were being involved. The I-T department claimed to have found that the two real estate companies infused unaccounted funds across several companies through “suspicious” transactions with the “involvement of an influential family of Maharashtra”.