Hyderabad: Politics in Andhra Pradesh is currently revolving around the recent income-tax raids on certain infrastructure companies belonging to Telugu Desam leaders and on the residence of former personal secretary to ex-chief minister and TD president N. Chandrababu Naidu.
For the past three days, leaders of ruling YSR Congress and main opposition Telugu Desam are making allegations and counter allegations against each other based on reports related to the raids. But leaders of both parties are ignoring facts while selectively picking up points from the reports that suit them.
For example, after the raids on three companies belonging to TD leaders and residence of Srinivasa Rao, former PS of Mr Naidu, the income tax department issued a press note, which made no mention of what was recovered or seized. The note merely said “search operation was also carried out on close associates, including ex personal secretary of a prominent person and incriminating evidence seized”. The I-T department did not reveal what incriminating evidence was seized.
It further said, “The search operations revealed that infrastructure companies sub contracted work to several non-existing / bogus entities. Preliminary estimates suggest siphoning of more than Rs2,000 crore through transactions...” According to the I-T department note, Rs2,000 crore belonged to three IT companies of the TD leaders. Srinivasa Rao has nothing to do with these. But YSRC leaders are alleging that the I-T department found the Rs2,000 crore worth illegal transactions in relation to the ex-PS.
Meanwhile, two pages of the panchanama report related to the I-T raids on the residence of Srinivasa Rao have come out. One page says I-T officials found Rs2.63 lakh in Srinivasa Rao’s residence and the other page says officials discovered Rs51.22 lakh worth jewellery, but both the cash and jewellery were released and not seized.
Based on this, TD leaders started their counter attack on YSRC leaders. They say only Rs2.63 lakh was found in Srinivasa Rao’s residence and not Rs2,000 crore as being publicised by YSRC leaders. But the I-T department in its press note said unexplained cash of Rs85 lakh and jewellery worth Rs71 lakh have been seized. The department did not say whether they were seized from Srinivasa Rao’s residence or from residences of the owners of the infrastructure companies.
The follow up action of the I-T dept on these raids will reveal whether YSRC leaders are correct or the argument of TD leaders is right. Till then, both YSRC and TD leaders will continue their allegations against each other.
