The move follows the series of I-T raids last month on businesses and properties belonging to Pawar’s relatives and aides.
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Pune: The Income Tax department on Tuesday provisionally attached properties worth Rs. 1,000 crores allegedly linked to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. The move follows the series of I-T Department raids last month on businesses and properties belonging to Pawar’s relatives and aides.
The seized assets include a sugar factory, a residential property in South Delhi, an office in Mumbai’s upmarket area (believed to be Nirmal Tower in Nariman Point), a resort in Goa among others including land in different parts of the State, said sources in the IT department. The Department has seized the properties under the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988.
Last month, teams from the I-T department had raided businesses including sugar factories and searched the homes of Ajit Pawar’s sisters in Kolhapur and Pune, as well as the Mumbai office of his son Parth Pawar.
BJP leader Dr Kirit Somaiya, who has been targeting Pawar and other Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government leaders over alleged financial irregularities, tweeted saying that among the assets provisionally attached by the I-T department were the Satara-based Jarandeshwar sugar factory (estimated at Rs. 600 crores, a South Delhi flat (worth Rs. 20 crores), the Nirmal building office of Parth Pawar (Ajit Pawar’s son), estimated at Rs. 25 crore and a Goa resort valued at Rs. 250 crores.
“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 that he felt aggrieved that authorities were raiding the homes of his sisters in Pune and Kolhapur. He argued that all firms and entities linked to him, taxes were paid regularly.
“As the State’s Finance Minister, I am well aware of the need to maintain fiscal discipline. Companies linked to me have never defaulted in taxes,” Ajit Pawar had said last month.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, too, had reacted strongly to the raids, mocking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre by remarking that they were not worried by the “guests at their 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.
The NCP chief had remarked that the action reeked of “excessive use of power” and said that the I-T raids were perhaps a reaction to his strong comments on the Lakhimpur Kheri incident in Uttar Pradesh, which he had likened to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
