Ahead of the Assembly elections, Income Tax searches were held at the home and office premises of DMK and MDMK members in Tiruppur’s Dharapuram constituency on March 17, Wednesday. According to reports, searches began around 4.30 pm on Wednesday and continued through the night at DMK’s Dharapuram Town Secretary KS Dhanasekar and MDMK’s District Joint Secretary and businessman Kavin Nagaraj. More details on the searches are yet to be made public.
Notably, BJP’s state President L Murugan is contesting from Dharapuram constituency where he will face DMK’s Kayalvizhi Selvaraj. Kayalvizhi, a functionary of the party’s women’s wing has been a member of DMK since 1996. Dharapuram is the only reserved constituency in the Kongu region. During the 2011 elections, AIADMK’s K Ponnusamy had won the MLA ticket from Dharapuram. During the 2016 Assembly elections, Congress member Kalimuthu had stood and emerged victorious. Since 1971, five AIADMK MLAs, four DMK MLAs, and one PMK and Congress MLA each have won from this constituency.
I-T searches were also held at the Bridgeway colony extension, Lakshmi Nagar premises of Anitha Texcot (India) Private Limited, a textile manufacturing company, in Tiruppur on Wednesday. The residence and offices of C Chandrasekhar, the party treasurer of Kamal Haasan's Makkal Needhi Maiam, were also raided by the Income Tax Department. Chandrasekhar is the Chairman of Anita Texcot Company and is also a director in Rajkamal Frontiers company, along with Kamal Haasan.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission of India announced that it has seized Rs 331 crore from the four poll-going states and Puducherry Union Territory as part of the expenditure monitoring process. A maximum of Rs 127.64 crore worth of seizures are from Tamil Nadu. For effective monitoring to curb black money in assembly elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Union Territory of Puducherry, the poll panel has deployed 295 expenditure observers.
(With PTI inputs)