New Delhi, Feb 7: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday (February 7) carried out searches at locations linked to former Uttarakhand minister and Congress leader Harak Singh Rawat, as well as several others, as part of a money laundering investigation.
What happened?
Reports suggest that the ED is conducting raids on several locations linked to Harak Singh Rawat in Delhi, Chandigarh and Uttarakhand in an alleged forest scam case.
It is pertinent to mention that during Rawat's tenure as the state forest minister in the BJP Government, Rawat and some of his departmental officers came under serious allegations related to their involvement in illegal tree cutting and construction in the Pakhro range of Corbett Park under the Tiger Safari Project.
The Forest Survey of India (FSI) claimed in its report that more than 6,000 trees were illegally cut in the Corbett Tiger Reserve (CTR) against the permission of 163 for the Pakhru tiger safari. However, the state forest department refuted the FSI's claims and said that some technical issues needed to be resolved before finally accepting the report.
This, however, isn't the first time that properties linked to Rawat have come under scrutiny by the ED officials, as earlier, the Uttarakhand Vigilance Team had raided an institute in Dehradun's Shankarpur and a petrol pump in Chhiddarwala linked to him.
Notably, the latest vigilance operation against the properties of Harak Singh Rawat has been ordered by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami.
Who is Harak Singh Rawat?
In 2022, Harak Singh Rawat faced dismissal from the Uttarakhand cabinet and a six-year suspension from the BJP for alleged "anti-party activities." Later, he joined the Congress ahead of the state assembly elections, where the BJP secured victory for a second consecutive term.
Harak Singh Rawat was among the ten MLAs who defected from the Congress to the BJP in 2016, rebelling against former Chief Minister Harish Rawat.
These recent ED raids unfolded a day after the agency conducted searches at the premises of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's personal assistant Bibhav Kumar, Rajya Sabha MP and party treasurer ND Gupta, and others. The investigation is focused on allegations of routing bribes, stemming from irregularities in the Delhi Jal Board tendering process, as election funds for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
While the AAP accused the Centre and the ED of intimidation, labeling the raids as politically motivated, the BJP countered with corruption allegations against the Kejriwal government.