Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the Congress had made “corruption a cause” by demonstrating an “unprecedented protest with a political motivation” outside the Income Tax Office in Bengaluru for conducting searches on PWD contractors and engineers.
A team of Income Tax officials had conducted raids at the residence of JD(S) leader and Karnataka Minor Irrigation Minister C S Puttaraju and his nephew on Thursday. The raids were conducted at Puttaraju’s Chinnakurli residence in Mandya and his nephew’s house in Mysuru. Led by Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, the Congress-JDS ruling combine later organised a protest in front of the department.
In his latest Facebook blog titled ‘The UPA makes corruption a cause’, the senior BJP leader said the “disproportionality of the reaction of the Congress and the JDS raised a needle of suspicion”.
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“Why the Chief Minister and the Ministers be seen raising slogans on the streets when corrupt Contractors and Engineers are being searched? Was the Minister’s Nephew a PWD Contractor to whom largesses have been given – a case of nepotism? There is a lurking suspicion due to the disproportionality of the reaction that the protestors were more concerned with regard to the ‘substance’ of the search,” Jaitley wrote.
Terming the protests as a “transparent self-goal”, the minister said, “The above (Bengaluru case) illustrates a textbook method of the UPA on 2 fronts: use Government money, round trip it through Contractors and beneficiaries and enrich themselves. The second is lip sympathy for federalism and destroy it whenever the opportunity arises. This is a very transparent self-goal.”