The Enforcement Directorate is conducting searches in 40 different states as part of a money laundering inquiry into suspected anomalies in the now-withdrawn Delhi excise policy.
According to reports, Hyderabad, the capital of TRS-ruled Telangana, is home to 20 of these spots.
According to government sources, searches are being performed at locations connected to distributors, supply chain networks, and liquor businesspeople in Nellore and a few other cities in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Delhi-NCR.
This is the second set of raids on the case in as many weeks. The investigation agency raided private residences of those listed in the case and searched 45 places across Delhi, Telangana, Maharashtra, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka last week.
The searches today occur early on a day when Delhi minister Satyendar Jain, detained in a money laundering case more than three months ago, is also scheduled to be questioned about the state’s stance on the sale of alcohol.
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Arvind Kejriwal, the chief of the Aam Aadmi Party and the chief minister of Delhi, will speak to the media shortly.
He has accused the federal government of using its investigative agencies against members of his party for personal benefit and refuted any anomalies in the controversial liquor policy.
A mandate from Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena, a representative of the BJP-led government at the center, has prompted the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which looks into financial crimes, to look into the liquor policy.
In Gujarat, the party’s election campaign extensively uses central investigation agencies’ actions against AAP ministers.
It asserts that the Delhi government’s development efforts are being hampered, and its ministers are harassed by the governing BJP, which is allegedly scared by popular support for the party.
After the Lieutenant Governor requested an investigation in July, Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi and the face of the AAP’s significant educational reform promises was searched and designated an accused by the CBI.
The strategy, which brought private companies to the booze industry and went into effect in November of last year, was reversed by Arvind Kejriwal’s administration in the same month.
The AAP claimed that the policy was “scuttled by the BJP’s federal government via the Lieutenant Governor” and was intended to increase income.
According to the BJP, bribes were received for contracts.
In the most recent back-and-forth, the BJP displayed a covertly recorded video in which a person also accused in the FIR asserts that the Delhi government purposefully excluded smaller players from their “tailored” excise policy in order to aid a select few people.
