Jaipur/New Delhi: The Rajasthan political crisis took a new turn on Monday when the Income Tax and Enforcement Directorate teams raided multiple premises connected to people from Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s camp.
According to IT department officials, searches were underway in offices of veteran state Congress leaders, including Rajeev Arora and Dharmendra Rathod, considered close to the Chief Minister.
Unaccounted cash, jewelry, property papers and lockers were seized. The team also reached Bhilwara and Jhalawad to carry out searches, officials said in media reports.
In wake of this, the Congress has postponed its legislature party meeting by a few hours, while the party’s state whip Mahesh Joshi and national media in-charge Randeep Singh Surjewala hit out at the BJP for “misusing investigative agencies for its self-fulfilling goals”.
According to IT department sources, searches were also carried out in Delhi at premises of one of the Kothari brothers, who once was awarded a mega irrigation project in Rajasthan and faced complaints of irregularities in dam construction.
The sources said that the searches were conducted at the office premises of Om Metals Infra Projects Ltd in Saket area and at Kothari’s residential premises in Sainik Farms area.
Meanwhile, the ED team also carried out searches at Hotel Fairmont in Jaipur.
According to ED sources, investor Ratan Kant Sharma, a close aide of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot, is under the financial probe agency’s scanner.
An ED source claimed that Sharma had allegedly received around Rs 96.7 crore from Mauritius and has stakes in Hotel Fairmont.
The ED source claimed that Sharma and Vaibhav Gehlot are business partners.
Sharma was summoned by the ED four days ago. The agency suspects that large scale overseas transactions have taken place.
A crisis brew up in Rajasthan after Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot revolted against the Gehlot-led government.
Soon after the culmination of the CLP meeting at the Chief Minister’s residence in Jaipur on Monday, Rajasthan Congress MLAs were sent to the Fairmont Hotel on the Delhi-Jaipur highway after the party passed a resolution raising a demand to punish “anti-party elements”.
Fairmont is the same hotel which was raided by I-T sleuths on Monday morning.
Four buses were parked outside the Chief Minister’s residence which took the MLAs to the hotel as part of the resort politics to keep the Gehlot camp’s flock safe amid the rising crisis posed by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s sulking deputy Sachin Pilot.
However, brushing aside Pilot’s claims, Gehlot showed majority numbers and flashed a victory symbol as over 100 MLAs stood with him.
The party also passed resolution against the BJP after the CLP meeting and said that it strongly condemns “attempts to kill democracy”.
It said that people behind anti-party acts should be punished as it criticised any kind of “undemocratic act” which maligns the party’ image.
