New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday condemned the raid at multiple premises of Tamil Nadu Education Minister K Ponmudy and his MP son Gautham Sigamani Pon by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and alleged that the Centre is trying to ‘break parties and scare everyone’. His reaction came after the ED on Monday conducted raids at multiple premises of Ponmudy and his son in a money laundering case linked to alleged illegal mining.
“We strongly condemn ED raids on TN Education minister now. They are trying to break parties and scare everyone with ED,” Arvind Kejriwal said in a tweet.
“But for ED, NDA would be left with no partners and many leaders in BJP would have also left. You cannot scare or control a great nation like India through ED,” he added.
Ponmudy, notably, is the second Minister in the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin’s cabinet to face ED raids following Senthil Balaji, who was arrested last month in a cash-for-jobs case following searches.
The 72-year-old Ponmudy is an MLA from the Tirukkoyilur Assembly constituency in the Villupuram district while his 49-year-old son Sigamani is a Member of Parliament representing the Kallakurichi seat.
ED raids K Ponmudy in illegal mining case
The money laundering case is linked to alleged irregularities when Ponmudy was the state mining minister (between 2007 and 2011) and there were allegations of violation of quarry licence conditions leading to loss of about Rs 28 crore to the exchequer.
The TN police had filed a complaint to probe these charges of alleged corruption against the minister and those linked to him and the Madras High Court in June refused to stay the trial in this case after Sigamani approached it with a petition for relief. The minister is accused of obtaining mining/ quarry licences for his son and other family members and the licencees are alleged to have quarried red sand beyond the permissible limit.
The High Court said that there were grounds to presume that the petitioner has committed the offence and hence the trial cannot be stopped.
MK Stalin mocks ED
CM MK Stalin mocked the central agency as having joined the ‘election campaign.’
“As regards Tamil Nadu, Governor RN Ravi is already conducting a poll campaign for us and now, the ED has joined (the poll scene) and I feel the election work for us will be easy,” the DMK president said.
“The DMK is not worried a wee bit,” he said on the ED searches.
“Opposition parties joining forces has irritated the BJP and the ED searches reflected it. That agency’s raids were a ‘tactic to divert attention’ from the ‘objective’ of the Opposition meetings, held first in Patna last month, to be held now in Bengaluru and later in other states,” Stalin alleged.
People, who were witnessing it all would give a fitting reply in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha polls, he added.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge condemns ED raids
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge also condemned the ED raids and said, “This has become Modi Govt’s predictable script in order to intimidate and divide the opposition.”
Taking to his official Twitter account, he further said surprisingly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ‘suddenly’ woken up to the need of putting together an alliance of ideologically opposed parties.
“All like-minded parties are united against the vendetta politics of the Modi Govt and shall not be bogged down by these cowardly tactics to trample upon democracy,” Kharge said.
Bureau Report
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