The State Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has accused the Congress of misusing the Income Tax department as an ‘election weapon’ ahead of the Assembly elections in the State. The party also termed as baseless the allegations of Income tax officials having found the BJP leaders involved in corruption.
State BJP president Narendra Singh Tomar and senior Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya in a joint press conference said they were ready to accept the challenge of the Congress that was using IT as a tool to beat the BJP with.
Showing the documents of I-T officials which were marked ‘confidential’, Vijayvargiya wondered how these documents came out from the Income tax office and reached the hands of Congress leaders.
Declaring that the Congress in Madhya Pradesh would not be able to win elections, Tomar said the Congress was trying to malign the image of the BJP and its leaders by ‘misusing’ the Income Tax department. “This is not for the first time that we have witnessed misuse of the Central agencies. Earlier, in Tamil Nadu and other States, it has been seen that the Congress led UPA government misused the CBI,” he added.
Tomar further said the Income Tax department might have summoned both the ministers, Rajendra Shukla and laxmikant Sharma. What was surprising was that the findings of the investigation were leaked, he added.
Tomar asked the Congress leaders to come in the field and discuss the development of Madhya Pradesh instead of indulging in dirty politics. Vijayvargiya said that instead of coming from the front, the Congress was out to misuse the Income Tax department against the State government.
He said, “I have complete information that a meeting of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s advisor Ahmed Patel along with Mohan Prakash and others took place in New Delhi recently and it was decided to resort to such tactic to malign the image of the BJP and the State government.”