BENGALURU, 30 MARCH

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday said BJP is wrong if it thought that it could intimidate Congress party with "tax terrorism".

Reacting to Income Tax Department's fresh notice to the party asking to pay Rs 1,823 crore, Siddaramaiah alleged that BJP is afraid of losing the Lok Sabha elections and hence "terrorising" the party by misusing central agencies. "As part of this tactic, they have unleashed tax terrorism on our party. BJP is under the illusion that by weakening our party, it can win the election," Siddaramaiah said.

Quoting Congress leaders, the Chief Minister said between 2017 and 2018, BJP obtained contributions from 92 undisclosed donors and 1,297 donors lacking address details. "Should the same criteria (of raising tax demand) be applied to BJP, it would be liable to pay Rs 4,263 crore for tax discrepancies over the last seven years," Siddaramaiah said.

He said Income Tax Department has become "hyperactive", using tax terrorism as a tool against Opposition parties, including, TMC and CPI, as the election approaches.

 However, the same I-T Department, which aggressively targets Opposition parties, mysteriously turns a blind eye to the BJP's tax violations. The public is not so ignorant as to not question who is blindfolding the I-T Department, the Chief Minister said.

"The I-T Department, which levies accusations of tax violations against certain Congress leaders citing supposed diary entries, overlooks the Yediyurappa diaries exposed in Karnataka, as well as the 'Birla-Sahara' diary that suggests Narendra Modi was a beneficiary. Why have these not caught the department's attention?" Siddaramaiah asked.

He alleged that the ruling BJP has misappropriated thousands of crores through electoral bonds, misusing institutions like IT, ED, and CBI. However, now,  to divert the people's attention from this huge scam, the BJP government is making false accusations of income tax evasion with the malicious intention of portraying the Opposition parties as guilty, the Chief Minister charged.

"In the past five years, the BJP government has written off around Rs 10.09 lakh crore of bank loans of fraudsters like Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi. The public deserves to know how many kickbacks the BJP received from these individuals," Siddaramaiah claimed.