The BJP, apprehensive of an impending defeat in the upcoming elections, has misused autonomous bodies such as the I-T Department, he said.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah (Supplied)
In a scathing press statement issued on Saturday, 30 March, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has accused the BJP of resorting to ‘tax terrorism’ and misusing government institutions to undermine the party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP, apprehensive of an impending defeat in the upcoming elections, has misused autonomous bodies such as the IT Department, Enforcement Directorate (ED), and CBI to target the Congress, he said.
Siddaramaiah alleged that this tactic is aimed at weakening the party’s electoral prospects. “The BJP is under the illusion that by weakening our party, it can win the election,” he said.
The Chief Minister said that the Income Tax Department has issued a notice demanding a payment of ₹1,823 crore for alleged unpaid taxes.
“Our leaders have revealed that between 2017 and 2018, the BJP obtained contributions from 92 undisclosed donors, and from 1,297 donors lacking address details, amounting to ₹42 crore,” he said and added, “Should the same criteria be applied to the BJP, it would be liable to pay ₹4,263 crore for tax discrepancies over the last seven years.”
Siddaramaiah further alleged that the I-T Department has become “hyperactive”, using “tax terrorism” as a tool in targetting Opposition parties, including the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Communist Party of India (CPI), while turning a blind eye to tax violations by the BJP.
“The public is not so ignorant as to not question, who is blindfolding the I-T Department,” he said.
While the Income Tax Department accuses certain Congress leaders of tax violations based on alleged diary entries, he said that it ignores evidences like Yediyurappa diaries exposed in Karnataka and the ‘Birla-Sahara’ diary implicating Narendra Modi.
“Why have these not caught the department’s attention?” Siddaramaiah asked.
“It is public knowledge that the ruling BJP has misappropriated thousands of crores through electoral bonds, misusing institutions like IT, ED, and CBI. However, now, in order to divert the people’s attention from this huge scam, the BJP government is making false accusations of Income Tax evasion with the malicious intention of portraying the opposition parties as guilty,” he said.
“In the past five years, the BJP government has written off around ₹10.09 lakh crore of bank loans of fraudsters like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi. The public deserves to know how much kickbacks the BJP received from these individuals,” he alleged.
While underscoring that Congress relied on grassroots support rather than financial resources, Siddaramaiah accused the BJP of being backed by “tax evaders, bank destabilisers, mining plunderers, black market traders, and robbers.”
He said that BJP has maintained its grip on power by leveraging funds obtained from fraudulent sources. The infamous “Operation Kamala” in Karnataka serves as a prominent example of this.
“Seeing Prime Minister Narendra Modi boast of winning 400 seats while engaging in such illegal activities to crush the opposition reveals that he has clearly seen the writing on the wall,” Siddaramaiah added.
(Edited by Shauqueen Mizaj)
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