Lashing out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the income tax raids on the premises of Samajwadi Party (SP) leaders, party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday said that the BJP is misusing central investigating agencies to target Opposition members.
Addressing a press conference in Kannauj, the SP chief said, "BJP is trying to pollute SP's name. Those who spread the smell of hatred will not like the fragrance of the perfume. Earlier they have mistakenly conducted raids at the residence of their own man and now to cover that they are conducting searches on residences SP leaders."
"The raids were pre-determined. Information was coming here for the past few days that raids have started on SP leaders. Here, for the last two weeks, there have been raids on people associated with Samajwadi and whenever the BJP leaders from Delhi come to Uttar Pradesh they bring these agencies along. During this time, they are instructed to conduct raids," alleged Akhilesh Yadav.
"Ever since the BJP feared defeat, leaders started coming from Delhi and their allies Enforcement Directorate (ED), Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Income Tax (IT) started coming. We tied up with small political parties and they tied up with investigating agency CBI, ED and IT," he added.
He said that Kannauj is a fragrance capital and many farmers are associated with the perfume business.
"Kannauj city is associated with SP, the perfumes here have been manufactured here for many years and not only the traders but also farmers here are associated with this business, and many other businesses are related to it. It is the capital of perfumes and fragrances like Grassland is the perfume capital in France," said SP leader.
He further alleged that the BJP government in the State has stopped many projects in Kannauj.
"The BJP stopped all the work of the SP government here, we had planted a cow milk plant here, which would have benefited the farmers here and business would have increased, but the BJP sabotage the cow milk plant," he said.
He said, "BJP had talked about demonetisation and GST, but despite that, so much money, was found. They went to raid find Pushpraj Jain but raided his own Piyush Jain. Now these people are raiding Pushpraj Jain to rectify their mistake."
Earlier this morning, a team from the Income Tax department conducted raids at premises belonging to Samajwadi Party MLC Pushapraj Jain (Pammi Jain) and another businessman in Uttar Pradesh's Kannauj.
According to sources the searches were conducted at around eight premises including Kanpur, Kannauj, Bombay and Surat linked to two businessmen. One more place in Tamil Nadu's Dindigul was also being searched, sources added.
SP leaders further said alleged that whenever they feel they are losing the election, they start conducting raids.
"Remember, when there were elections in West Bengal, all the agencies of Delhi had reached Bengal, although it happened with Stalin in Tamil Nadu and the same thing happened in Bangalore," he added.
He also appealed to the Election Commission to conduct all these raids after the elections if it comes in the code of conduct.
The Assembly elections in the state are scheduled for next year.
In the 2017 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party bagged 312 seats out of the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh Assembly while Samajwadi Party (SP) bagged 47 seats, Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) won 19 and Congress could manage to win only seven seats. The rest of the seats were bagged by other candidates.
( With inputs from ANI )
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor