The Income Tax (I-T) department on Thursday, 1 December, told the Madras High Court that it had recovered “enormous material”, including undisclosed receipts of income from mining and gutkha manufacturing firms, from former Tamil Nadu health minister and AIADMK MLA Dr C Vijayabhaskar during the search proceedings initiated against him in April, 2017.
The disclosure was made in a counter-affidavit filed by tax recovery officer Kumar Deepak Raj in response to a petition filed by the senior AIADMK leader challenging the attachment of 117.46 acres of land in Pudukottai and freezing of four of bank accounts by the I-T department in order to recover ₹206.42 crore as tax dues.
According to the I-T department, Vijayabhaskar indulged in tax evasion by the way of “claiming excess quarry expenses, unaccounted sales of blue metals, excess quarrying and undisclosed receipts” from SRS Mining, a company owned by mining baron Sekar Reddy and from manufacturers of gutkha/paan masala.
It maybe noted that Sekar Reddy had also come under the scanner of the tax department few years back. Pages of the diary seized from him showed that payments were made to the tune of over ₹48 crore to many ministers in the then AIADMK government and MLAs between April and November in 2016.
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Undisclosed income
As per the details enclosed by the I-T department, from SRS Mining’s alone, Vijayabhaskar allegedly received around ₹85 crore during the assessment years 2015-16 to 2017-18.
The former health minister also purportedly received undisclosed income of ₹2.40 crore in the same period from gutkha or paan masala manufacturers.
Interestingly, the I-T department has also made a note of ₹30.90 lakh described as “Koovathur Resort Expenses from undisclosed sources” in the counter-affidavit.
It was at a resort in Koovathur near Chennai that, in February 2017, AIADMK MLAs were housed by expelled party general secretary VK Sasikala to prevent poaching by the rival faction led by O Panneerselvam, and subsequently Edappadi K Palanisamy was appointed as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
With respect to the four bank accounts of Vijayabhaskar which have been frozen by the I-T department, the AIADMK leader claimed that his MLA salary account in which the constituency development fund would be credited was one among the four bank accounts.
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MLA fund account
Responding to this, the I-T department said that though funds were found to be received by the AIADMK MLA from Pudukottai from the Tamil Nadu government in one of the accounts, which according to them was not an exclusive salary account, the withdrawals were allegedly made only for personal purposes.
“It was also clear that though there are credits of ₹8,50,226 from the Government of Tamil Nadu during the financial year 2022-23, the withdrawals in the bank accounts are towards personal expenditure… There are no withdrawals or payments made from the bank account towards constituency expenses,” the counter-affidavit stated.
The tax department further said that the attachment proceedings were initiated only after Vijayabhaskar failed to pay even 20 percent of the outstanding amount for the assessment years 2012-13 to 2014-15, despite a communication from the Tax Recovery Officer in August this year.
This development comes just days after the CBI filed a charge sheet against Vijayabhaskar in connection with the gutkha scam, in which two former AIADMK ministers, several top police officers, including the then DGP TK Rajendran and other officials, were allegedly receiving bribes from gutkha manufacturing firms to allow the sale of banned tobacco products in the state.
