Karnataka: I-T Raids on Aides of JD(S) Leaders in Hassan, Mandya

Latest in a series of I-T raids, the I-T department on 16 April searched property of aides of JD(S) leaders.

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.

Notably, on 28 March, CM Kumaraswamy himself, accompanied by a slew of top coalition ministers including Siddaramaiah, DK Shivakumar and others, had protested against what they called ‘Modi’s real surgical strike’, in front of the Income Tax department in Bengaluru. A massive search and seizure operation had been conducted across 20 locations in Bengaluru, Mandya, Mysuru and Hassan, all on people with JD(S) links.

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’.

PM @narendramodi's real surgical strike is out in the open through IT dept raids. The constitutional post offer for IT officer Balakrishna helped the PM in his revenge game. Highly deplorable to use govt machinery, corrupt officials to harrass opponents during election time.

— H D Kumaraswamy (@hd_kumaraswamy) 28 March 2019

Raids Based on Credible Intelligence of Undisclosed Income and Assets: I-T Dept

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.’

Taxpayers covered in today’s search ops are engaged in the business of real estate, quarrying & stone crushing, executing Govt contracts, operating petrol bunks, saw mill & managing cooperative banks. These are sectors which are prone to generation of black money.

Income Tax Dept to ANI

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)