The Income Tax Department raids at the residence of Karnataka energy minister D K Shivakumar and his brother D K Suresh, a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament has come as a shocker. In what is seen as political vendetta, the raids have come days after the two brothers took the responsibility of hosting 44 MLAs from Gujarat who have been residing at Eagleton Golf Resort in Bengaluru, ahead of the Rajya Sabha re-elections in their state on August 8. The raids have kicked up a political storm with the Congress leadership blasting the Narendra Modi-led government of misusing state machinery to intimidate opposition parties to silence the voice against BJP.
Shivakumar is one of the richest ministers in the country with assets worth over Rs 251 crore. He also topped this list with liabilities of Rs 105 crore. In the 2013 Assembly polls, he was among the richest candidates contesting the polls with an increase of Rs 176 crore from 2008 elections. On the flip side, Shivakumar and his family has been linked to several cases of illegal mining and transporting granite illegally, and improper land distribution.
Shivakumar came into the picture after six Congress MLAs quit the party in Gujarat ahead of the crucial Rajya Sabha polls and the party leadership decided to virtually airlift its MLAs to Bengaluru to keep them from being poached by the BJP. The high-profile Karnataka energy minister was tasked by the Congress high command to look after the MLAs.
With time running out for the BJP to get the numbers for the RS poll as Congress MLAs continued to remain in a huddle, there was very little the saffron party could do to engineer a split. Raids on the man guarding the Congress fort in Karnataka appear to be a clear case of political revenge. Why should the raids come at a time when the political rivalries have taken centrestage. If the government knew he was involved in graft, why was he not investigated earlier, why now? Timing of the raids assumes significance, especially when there is politics being played in the foreground. If there were issues, notices should have been served to Shivakumar. The government cannot brush this aside as sheer coincidence.
Secondly, according to norms, during such raids, I-T officials obtain help from local police, but in this case CRPF staff was used. Nobody would buy the I-T department claim that investigations were going on for a considerable period of time and that the raids, which they claim were decided well in advance, were part of the probe. The government cannot unleash investigating agencies like CBI, ED and I-T to meet their political objectives.
