The Income Tax (IT) department on Friday, March 15, raided the house of Narayan Gowda Patil, executive engineer of Karnataka Rural Development department. The raids were conducted at his house in Haveri and a hotel in Bengaluru.
Patil had booked two rooms at Hotel Rajmahal in Anand Rao Circle, Bengaluru on his driver's name. He is said to have collected Rs 2 crore from a contractor. It is alleged that he collected the said amount for the election expenditure of politicians.
The IT sleuths have been monitoring Patil for quite some time now and the raids were conducted simultaneously at both places. according to the media reports, the IT department has seized a laptop, few receipts and Rs 2 crore from Bengaluru hotel and Rs 25 lakhs from his house in Nandini Layout, Haveri.
Patil escaped from the hotel after he got information on the IT raids, but the officials have arrested his driver from the hotel. The authorities are now searching for him as to know for whom the money was collected for, and how many politicians are connected with the illegal funding.
Rural Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda has denied any involvement in the matter. He also said that he would conduct an inquiry and obtain more details about the alleged scam.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has slammed the ruling Congress-JD(S) alliance for the alleged scam. BJP took the matter into Twitter, where they tweeted that, "Congress & JDS are collecting money from contractors who have been allocated with govt projects. 20% of govt in Karnataka is looting taxpayers money to fund Rahul Gandhi".
As the polling dates are nearing for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and most of the political parties busy with their campaigns, the IT department has been closely watching the election campaigners involved in illegal camping and fund collecting.
