The Congress on Sunday accused the Union government of resorting to “political vendetta” in Chhattisgarh by conducting income tax raids during which the CRPF assisted officials.
At a press conference here, Congress communications chief Randeep Surjewala and leader in charge of the State party affairs P.L. Punia said the Narendra Modi government was following “coercive centralism” instead of cooperative federalism. They said the raids were aimed at stalling the State’s investigation into the allegations of corruption against the previous BJP government, led by Raman Singh.
“The Modi government’s so-called alliance with Central investigating agencies in the non-BJP States has been extended to include the CRPF,” Mr. Surjewala said.
In the past three days, the Income Tax Department conducted raids across the State, even covering the family of a senior IAS officer in the Congress government of Bhupesh Baghel.
“A PDS scam involving ₹36,000 crore came to light earlier. The diary, which came into police possession by chance and which has details of the scam, has been put forth for the media by Mr. Baghel, T.S. Singh Deo and myself,” Mr. Surjewala said. The “clandestine, cloak-and-dagger raids” showed that the Centre was scared, he said.
He said the deployment of a Central force without the State being informed “undermines...the scheme laid out in List II of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, which places law and order under the State’s remit”.
Mr. Punia said the clumsy manner and timing of the raids exposed the Centre’s intentions. “No government in Indian history, before the Modi-Shah regime, can be accused of reducing the status of an elite force to that of an accompanying party for an income tax raid. No party, except the BJP, has ever used the CRPF to execute a political vendetta,” he said.
All previous governments deployed Central forces only under rare and exceptional circumstances and in public interest, he said. The Congress government saw a sign of encouragement in the raids that its own investigations into the alleged acts of corruption were proceeding in the right direction, he said.
