Opposition Samajwadi Party and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party were involved in a slugfest over an Income Tax department raid and subsequent seizure of huge cash and unaccounted wealth from the Kanpur premises of a perfume trader of Kannauj, the former Lok Sabha constituency of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and later his wife Dimple Yadav.
Businessman Piyush Jain had recently developed ‘Samajwadi Itr’ (perfume) which was released at a press conference by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow.
Slamming the IT raid as a political vendetta of the ruling BJP, Akhilesh tweeted, “Some journalists source their news reports from the BJP office. The perfume trader raided by the Income Tax department has no links with the Samajwadi Party yet the media is projecting the businessman as having close links with the SP.”
On its part, the BJP alleged that Samajwadi perfume ‘reeked’ of corruption as Akhilesh Yadav’s aide hid Rs 150 crore and the process of counting of the cash by eight note counting machines was still underway.
Pictures of machines counting wads of cash went viral and the figure is said to have already reached Rs 159 crore.
According to officials, tax evasion worth Rs 159 crore was detected during the raids and eight cash counting machines were taken to Jain’s house and the process of counting seized currency notes was on with the help of SBI officials.
The BJP, meanwhile, claimed that the I-T department had raided the perfume manufacturer who recently launched ‘Samajwadi Itr’ endorsed by Samajwadi Party. Taking the attack on the SP to social media, BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra claimed that the massive amount of cash seized during the raids was from the house of the person who launched ‘Samajwadi’ perfume.
Samajwadi Party spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary distanced the party from perfume manufacturer Piyush Jain, saying that he was not the one who launched Samajwadi Itr and a false narrative was being peddled by the BJP.
Last week, the I-T department had raided the residences of people associated with the SP. The raids took place at the residence and offices of Jainendra Yadav in Lucknow, SP spokesman Rajeev Rai in Mau, Manoj Rai in Agra and some others closely associated with SP and party chief Akhilesh Yadav. Akhilesh had attacked the BJP over the raids and said that the party was misusing the agencies.