Bangalore, October 25: Income tax officials on Monday raided 60 places, including offices of Karnataka Health Minister B Sriramulu, a close associate of the Reddy brothers, and houses of other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators in Karnataka, officials said.
The raids comes at a time when allegations are afoot that huge sums are exchanging hands under ruling BJP’s Operation Kamal to woo opposition MLAs.
The BJP legislators whose residences were raided are Suresh Babu and B Nagendra, both said to be close to the Reddys.
The raids started in the early morning and are expected to continue during the day, income tax department sources said.
Former union minister and Karnataka government’s special representative in New Delhi, V Dhananjaya Kumar, termed the raids a “political conspiracy” to destabilize the BJP ministry in the state.
State ministers and mining tycoons, Janardhana Reddy and Karunakara Reddy, and their youngest sibling Somshekhara Reddy, are known to have backed the 2008 Operation Lotus, a precursor of Operation Kamal, when seven Congress and JD(S) legislators defected giving majority to BJP in the assembly.
BJP described the raids as ‘an attempt to destabilize the government’ and said only party MLAs were targeted.
The Congress and JD(S) had been accusing the BJP of offering Rs 20-30 crore to opposition MLAs for defection during the ongoing political upheaval in Karnataka.
——–IANS