NEW DELHI, Nov 2: In what the nationalist Congress Party accused the BJP government at the centre of “letting loose the central agencies on the NCP leaders in Maharashtra,” the income tax department on Tuesday provisionally attached assets worth ₹1,000 crore allegedly linked to the Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
Earlier in the day, another NCP leader and former home minister Anil Deshmukh was placed under arrest and later sent to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) till November 6 in connection with the alleged extortion racket in which he was accused of having asked the Mumbai police to raise funds of over Rs 100 crores every months by threatening or harassing clubs, restaurants and other commercial establishments.
The IT move against Pawar, who is the nephew of the NCP chief and former union minister Sharad Pawar, followed raids last month on businesses and properties belonging to Pawar’s relatives and aides.
Official sources said the assets attached included a sugar factory, a residential property in South Delhi, an office in Mumbai’s upmarket area – Nirmal Tower in Nariman Point, a resort in Goa and land in different parts of the State. The properties were seized under the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988.
Last month, teams of I-T authorities had raided businesses, including sugar factories, and searched the houses of Pawar’s sisters in Kolhapur and Pune, as well as the Mumbai office of his son Parth Pawar.
On October 7, the tax agency had searched a firm where 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.
Subsequently, on October 15, the tax agency said it has unearthed unaccounted income of over Rs 184 crores in its searches at premises of two real estate groups in Mumbai linked to the family of Ajit Pawar. The tax authority said the two real estate companies infused unaccounted funds across several companies through “suspicious” transactions with the “involvement of an influential family of Maharashtra.”
The IT department allegedly identified transactions by these business groups with a web of companies that appear to be “suspicious.” It said the companies introduced unaccounted funds in the group “by way of various dubious methods like introduction of bogus share premium, suspicious unsecured loans, receipt of unsubstantiated advance for certain services, collusive arbitration deals out of non-existent disputes.”
BJP leader Kirit Somaiya, who has been targeting Pawar and other MVA Government leaders over alleged financial irregularities, tweeted saying that among the assets provisionally attached by the department were the Satara-based Jarandeshwar sugar factory (estimated at ₹600 crore), a South Delhi flat (worth ₹20 crore), the Nirmal office of Parth Pawar, estimated at ₹25 crore, and a Goa resort valued at ₹250 crore.
“These properties are owned by Ajit Pawar’s son, his wife, his mother, his sister and son-in-law,” tweeted the BJP leader. At the time of the raids, Pawar had said he felt aggrieved that authorities were raiding the houses of his sisters in Pune and Kolhapur while stressing that all firms and entities linked to him had always paid their taxes regularly. “As the State’s Finance Minister, I am aware of the need to maintain fiscal discipline. Companies linked to me have never defaulted in taxes,” Pawar had said last month.
Strongly reacting to the IT move, the NCP chief Sharad Pawar, mocked at the BJP Government at the Centre by remarking that he was not worried by the “guests at home” (I-T authorities).
The NCP chief further warned that the public would teach the BJP a lesson for shamelessly misusing Central agencies in such a reckless fashion. He had remarked that the action reeked of “excessive use of power” and said the I-T raids were perhaps a reaction to his strong comments on the Lakhimpur Kheri incident in Uttar Pradesh killing four farmers and a local journalist under speeding cars, which he had likened to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
(Manas Dasgupta)
