Third BRS MLA to join the Congress
A day after BRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao claimed that 20 Congress MLAs were ready to quit the party and join him, his party MLA Prakash Goud from Rajendranagar met Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Congress leader and former Karnataka Cabinet Minister DK Shivakumar’s wife and mother for questioning in connection with a money laundering case, an official said on Monday.
Shivakumar was arrested by the ED on September 3 and he is in the agency’s custody. In September last year, the central agency had registered a money laundering case against him, Haumanthaiah (an employee at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi) and others.
“We have summoned over 50 people in connection with the case for questioning. We have called Shivakumar’s wife and mother on October 17 in New Delhi,” the senior ED official told news agency IANS.
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Earlier, the ED has questioned Shivakumar’s daughter Aishwarya; his brother and MP DK Suresh; and Belagavi Rural MLA Lakshmi Hebbalkar.
According to the officials Shivakumar’s mother and wife needed to be summoned as the agency got some evidences about financial transactions while questioning several other persons in the last one month.
Shivakumar, now in judicial custody, has been on the radar of the Income Tax (I-T) Department and the ED since the demonetization in 2016. In an I-T raid at his New Delhi apartment on August 2, 2017, unaccounted Rs 8.83 crore cash was seized.
Shivakumar and his associates were booked under Sections 277 and 278 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, and Sections 120(B) (criminal conspiracy), 193 (punishment for false evidence) and 199 (false statements made in declaration which is by law receivable as evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Shivakumar’s affidavit submitted to the Election Commission before the Assembly elections in 2018 showed that his daughter Aishwarya owned assets of Rs 108 crore compared to only Rs 1.09 crore in 2013.
However, the Karnataka Congress leader clarified that his daughter Aishwarya was not dependent on his income and that he was still declaring her assets as per the Representation of Peoples Act.
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