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Two days before the state goes to polls in the second phase, the Income Tax department conducted simultaneous raids in Mandya, Hassan and Bengaluru on Tuesday, 16 April. The searches are being conducted on the residences of close allies of JD(S) leaders CS Puttaraju, Revanna and DC Thammanna.
While Revanna is Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy’s brother and an MLA from Hassan, CS Puttaraju is the Mandya MP and Thammanna is the Maddur MLA.
According to ANI, raids were carried out at two different locations of Zilla Panchayat President and JD(S)'s Nagarathna Swamy and another member of the Zilla Parishad, in Mandya's Maddur early on Tuesday.
Tuesday’s raids come close on the heels of searches on the premises of Congress candidates Rizwan Arshad from Bengaluru, BN Chandrappa from Chitradurga and Prakash Hukkeri of Chikkodi on 13 April.
In a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar, the Congress-JD(S) alliance had requested the transfer of BR Balakrishnan, director general, Income Tax in Karnataka for ‘selectively’ carrying out ‘partisan tax raids’, The News Minute reported.
During the earlier raids in March, Kumaraswamy had tweeted that Balakrishna had been offered a constitutional post for helping the PM in his ‘revenge game’.
In a statement to ANI, the department stated that searches were being carried out in Hassan, Mandya and Bengaluru based on ‘credible intelligence that certain businessmen have earned income not disclosed to tax and are in possession of undisclosed assets.’
Five residences in Hassan, one in Bangalore and one in Mandya along with their business premises were covered in the raids.
(With inputs from ANI and The News Minute)
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