Income Tax Commissioner S. K. Srivastava has written a complaint to the Election Commission (EC) for alleged subversion of the electoral process and vitiation of the election in Shivaganga constituency by Congress leader and former union minister P. Chidambaram. The IT Commissioner in his letter writes he wants to bring to the EC’s notice ‘unfettered abuse of illegitimate black money, the collusion of District Electoral Officer (DEO) cum Returning Officer (RO) and district administration and the abject failure of Election Observers in supervising the elections’.
The IT Commissioner states that the first fraud committed by the DEO cum RO in Shivaganga is the fact that on ECI and Tamil Nadu CEO website, Karti’s affidavit as a candidate for Congress mentions his father’s name as ‘Chidambaram’ and not ‘P. Chidambaram’ which was the correct name he Karti has stated in his Rajya Sabha nomination.
Labelling the DEO and RO as partisan and compromised, Srivastava has said that the officer has ignored that Karti Chidambaram has concealed that fact he is out on bail in many cases including cases relating to undeclared properties and assets. The I-T officer wrote that P Chidambaram has compromised the electoral process completely.
He also claimed that during the visit of Special Expenditure Observer of Shivganga, as many as 67 complaints were lodged alleging that P. Chidambaram had kept his illegal black money in malligai stores etc to be bribed to voters, and this matter has been hushed up by Returning Officer. The RO stated that after a visit by junior officials no such cases were noted and his officers did not consider that the complaints made to the expenditure observer should be verified, the letter stated.
Srivastava writes that the DEO cum RO officers are neither trained in the investigation of financial frauds nor they have the support base to very such frauds by ‘a hardened criminal like P. Chidambaram’, and the officer should have referred the matter to Income Tax department.
Making serious allegations against election officials of Shivganga, Srivastava writes that due to collusion of the DEO cum RO and other officers because of use of black money by PO Chidambaram, the RO had even deployed some junior officers to question the Special Expenditure Observer over the invitation of an income tax officer to a meeting.
Srivastava writes that the election process in Shivagana has got reduced to a farce by bribing voters and compromising the DEO cum RO and the district administration. He also said that if the election commission thinks that the allegations against Chidambaram should be probed, he is available for leading the same.
This is not the first time that Income Tax Commissioner S K Srivastava has written against P Chidambaram. Earlier he had written a 28-page letter giving details of corruption, immorality, and malpractices committed by Chidambaram. He had also alleged that Chidambaram had parked black money worth Rs 6700 crore in NDTV though 2G & Aircel-Maxis scams and Vasan Health Care money laundering.
Srivastava has also alleged that Income Tax officer Sumana Sharma, wife of NDTV journalist Abhisar Sharma, helped NDTV in tax evasions. It was alleged that NDTV had bribed the I-T officer, which included an all-expenses-paid trip Europe and Mauritius.
