Chennai: The Enforcement Directorate Monday conducted raids at the residence and properties connected to Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudy and his son MP Gautham Sigamani — the second minister in the state’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) to face such action.
The raids, which began at 7 am, were conducted at nine locations and came nearly a month after the Madras High Court refused to stay a corruption case against them.
Ponmudy, who served as the minister of mines between 2007 and 2011, has been accused of having misused his position by having helped relatives — including his son — to illegally obtain quarry licences. According to investigators, the “violations” have cost the state exchequer more than Rs 28 crore.
Rallying behind his cabinet colleague, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said the ED searches were “the reflection of the BJP’s irritation over opposition parties’ unity in Bihar and Bengaluru”, adding that the case against Ponmudy had been foisted by the rival All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) government 13 years ago.
“The ED-IT raids are just intimidation tactics used by the BJP, it has been done in other parts of the country and now being carried out in Tami Nadu. The DMK won’t be affected by this,” Stalin told the media.
The development comes a month after ED arrested Tamil Nadu minister Senthil Balaji on corruption charges. Balaji was arrested in the early hours of 14 June for having allegedly “misused” his office and “engineered” a job racket scam in the state transport undertakings in 2014-15 while he was still serving as the state’s transport minister in the then AIADMK government. The DMK had called the raids on Senthil Balaji “vendetta politics“ being played out by the BJP through the ED.
In a tweet Monday, political analyst Sumanth C.Raman said such raids, taken “without follow up action or even a statement on what was found only helps create sympathy for crooked politicians enabling them to claim political persecution”.
#EDraid and #ITraid without follow up action or even a statement on what was found only helps create sympathy for crooked politicians enabling them to claim political persecution. What was found in all the raids on #SenthilBalaji or #Gsquare is still not known. Now they are on to…
— Sumanth Raman (@sumanthraman) July 17, 2023
Monday’s raids also come weeks after Ponmudy and six others were acquitted by a special court in a 2004 land grab case registered by the state’s Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) department. On 6 July, Ponmudy was being tried for having illegally acquired 3,630 sq.ft of government land at Chennai’s Saidapet.
Ponmudy has also been making headlines in connection with the arrest of Senthil Balaji — it was he who held a press conference to accuse Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi acting like a “BJP agent.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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