P Rama Mohana Rao, who was ousted as Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu last week following the Income Tax raids on his house, office and business establishments of his son, came out in the open on Tuesday and charged that the raids in his house were carried out against all Constitutional proprieties.
“I was under house arrest by the CRPF. The raid by the Income Tax Department in my residence and office were an assault on the Constitution. It was a Constitutional assault,” declared Rao while speaking to journalists at his Anna Nagar residence in Chennai.
But what stood out in Rao’s interaction with journalists were two declarations made by him. “I am the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu. I will be the CS in future too because I was appointed by Puraitchi Thalaivi Amma (as Jayalalithaa, the former Chief Minister who passed away on December 5 in addressed by the AIADMK cadre). The present Government has not served any orders transferring me from the post of CS. This Government does not have the guts to serve an order like that,” said an emotionally charges Rao. He also charged that the Centre was victimising and harassing him.
Rao alleged that the CRPF was holding him at gunpoint while the I-T officials went ahead with the raid. He said the I-T officials could not get any worthwhile documents or ill gotten wealth from either him or his son’s residences. “Do you know what they got after the raidIJ Rs1, 12, 320 in cash, 40-50 sovereigns gold belonging to my wife and daughter and 20-25 kg silver with which the idols in our pooja room have been made,” said Rao.
He had been admitted to the ICU of a corporate hospital on Saturday following complaints of chest pain and was in the ICU for two days. But Rao got himself discharged from the hospital and rushed to Anna Nagar residence by Tuesday noon where he met the reporters.
The open defiance and challenge by Rao have been scoffed at by veteran bureaucrats. CP Nair, former Chief Secretary of Kerala, expressed shock and surprise over the delay in taking disciplinary actions againt Rao by the State and Central Governments. “He is completely wrong in his assumption that the IT department has no right to raid him or the CRPF could not be deployed. We in Kerala had many instances of Chief Secretaries and other senior bureaucrats getting raided by the IT department. There is no reason for the political leadership to be told about it. And there is nothing unusual or irregular in the deployment of CRPF at his residence or office,” said Nair over telephone from Trivandrum.
While some of the Tamil chauvinist parties and leaders challenged the Centre’s might to raid State’s bureaucrats, RK Raghavan, former director of the CBI said the Centre and the I-T Department were within their rights while raiding the Chief Secretary. “The I-T department is governed by its own act and has powers to conduct investigations. It need not inform the State Government. Income Tax officials have the power to act independently,” Raghavan told reporters.