On Wednesday, Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had dubbed the raids as ‘politically motivated’.
On Thursday, a panel of Congress leaders presented an 8 paged memorandum to the Election Commission of India. This is regarding the recent Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids on Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi’s nephew Bhupinder Singh Honey. The party in the letter has claimed that the raids were ‘politically motivated’, conducted solely to ‘malign the image’ of CM Channi, and the Congress government, and sought from the ECI directions to the Finance Ministry, ED, and other Central agencies.
Congress made no mention, however, of the high-value seizures and recoveries made, which included an alleged Rs 10 crore in cash. In the letter, Congress writes, “Seeking urgent and necessary directions to the Finance Ministry & Enforcement Directorate officials and other central agencies carrying out political vendetta by motivated raids in violation of Election Commission’s Directions/orders under Model Code of Conduct and Constitutional powers under Representation of People Act, 1951, and the Indian Penal Code, 1860,”
On Wednesday, CM Charanjit Channi too had dubbed the raids as ‘politically motivated’. Citing instances of raids on relatives of Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, also in Tamil Nadu, on MK Stalin’s relatives, the Congress leader said that it was the BJP’s “old tactic to use ED and IT and bring distractions during the time of elections.”
He had alleged that he had the FIR of the illegal sand mining case, but the name of his nephew was nowhere mentioned. “He was detained with the intention that he will take my name. They threatened and tortured him to take my name,” he had further alleged.
Issuing a clarification on allegations made by Channi with respect to his nephew, the Enforcement Directorate had said that no one involved in the recent raids was threatened. As per the ED, during the course of the search, various incriminating documents related to the sand mining business, property transactions; mobile phones, Indian currency more than Rs 10 Crore, Gold worth above 21 lakh and a Rolex watch worth Rs 12 lakh were found and seized from the search premises.
The ED initiated the money-laundering investigation in the illegal sand mining case on the basis of a 2018 FIR registered by Police Station – Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar, Punjab, under Section 379, 420, 465, 467, 468 and 471 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 21(1) and 4(1) of Mines and Minerals (Regulation of Development) Act, 1957.
The politics over ED raids come right ahead of the Punjab elections. The voting for its 117 assembly seats is slated to be held on February 20, with the counting of votes on March 10.
On this Randeep Surjewala released a video on this in media while calling this ED raid as a habit of BJP to use central agencies only to malign the image of CM Channi. On the other hand, the Convenor of Aam Aadmi Party Arvind Kejriwal too took a jibe at Channi, saying that he was too raided by Central Agencies but they found only 11 mufflers, unlike Rs 10 Crores, 56 Crores fake entries of bank accounts, Jaguar cars.