The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) on Wednesday accused the BJP of misusing central agencies against the Opposition ahead of elections in Punjab, following raids conducted by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) at business and residential premises of AAP MP Ashok Kumar Mittal.
Mittal had recently replaced AAP MP Raghav Chadha as the party's Deputy Leader in the Rajya Sabha. Raids were conducted at multiple locations of the Lovely Group, headed by Mittal, in Jalandhar and Phagwara in Punjab.
Reacting to the ED action, SP MP Rajeev Rai said: "Maybe if he (Mittal) was not chosen as the AAP's Deputy Leader (in the Rajya Sabha), such a thing would not have happened."
"Before the Uttar Pradesh elections, such raids were conducted against me."
Speaking to IANS, Rai alleged that the central agencies have lost their respect and are tarnishing their image. "When the government loses faith in the democracy and the people, it uses these agencies to scare and threaten people," he said.
Punjab Minister Harpal Singh Cheema alleged that wherever elections are held in any state, "BJP openly misuses agencies like ED, CBI, and the Election Commission".
"Now, as elections are approaching in Punjab, the BJP has also started this here," he added.
Echoing similar sentiment, AAP leader Anurag Dhanda told IANS: "It seems that the Bharatiya Janata Party has started its election preparations in Punjab."
"This is BJP's working pattern. Instead of contesting with the votes, they contest using ED, CBI and voter deletions. This clearly shows how unpopular the BJP has become among the people, that they (have to) begin their election preparations with the ED and CBI," he alleged.
Underlining that there are no coincidences in politics, AAP leader Priyanka Kakkar accused Chadha of being involved.
"We have got information that recently BJP's top leaders had done a meeting with Raghav Chadha and there it was decided that he (Chadha) will be provided with Z+ security and that raids will happen at Ashok Mittal's residence," she alleged.
Terming the incident as 'unfortunate', Kakkar told IANS: "Raghav Chadha should remember that AAP and party chief Arvind Kejriwal made a common party worker a Rajya Sabha member."
However, Punjab BJP President Sunil Jakhar accused the AAP of being involved in corruption in the state.
He cited the recent directive from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which had questioned the AAP government over non-registration of an FIR in an alleged multi-crore scam in a post-matric scholarship scheme for Scheduled Caste students.
Jakhar said that the ED raids should be seen from this perspective.
Significantly, the scam occurred during the Congress government’s tenure in Punjab.
--IANS