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Sushil Anand Shukla. File
Reacting sharply to the Supreme Court order either quashing or simply disposing of complaints of money-laundering in the alleged ₹2,000 crore liquor scam in Chhattisgarh, the Congress has termed the entire exercise as “a script to help the Bharatiya Janata Party” in last year’s Assembly polls. It has also raised questions on the other alleged scams reported during its tenure [2018-23].
“See, the Supreme Court has trashed the ED [Directorate of Enforcement] investigation report into the alleged liquor scam of Chhattisgarh. The Supreme Court said that there has been no case of any kind of money-laundering in this. So after this decision of the Supreme Court, it has been proved that the Central government of Bharatiya Janata Party in Chhattisgarh and the ED had together written the script of this scam to tarnish the image of the then government,” State Congress spokesperson Sushil Anand Shukla said, on April 9
He further alleged that the coal scam and the so-called Mahadev App scam are being talked about were also a conspiracy written by the ED, a script which was meant “to help the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Assembly elections”.
Earlier former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and the Congress’ candidate from Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha seat, Bhupesh Baghel, also took to X (formerly Twitter) and wrote a post referring to the Supreme Court order on the alleged liquor scam in which he alleged that the “conspiracy of the BJP Central government to defame its political rivals by misusing democratic institutions has been exposed”.
“Today’s decision of the Supreme Court has proved that at the behest of the BJP, the ED is conspiring to defame the Opposition parties by turning every case into a money-laundering case,” a portion of his post written in Hindi read.
The alleged liquor scam was among the several cases of corruption – others being the purported liquor scam, coal levy scam, Mahadev App scam, District Mineral Fund scam and irregularities in State public service commission – surfaced during the course of Mr. Baghel’s tenure, with the ED probing the money-laundering angle in some of those cases. The Central agency had also arrested businessmen and influential bureaucrats among others while also conducting raids at many Congress leaders in connection with one or more of these cases.
In its Assembly election campaign last year, the BJP had made these allegations a key poll issue and their success was attributed to the aggressive stand on the subject. Even after the elections, the BJP has kept the issue alive. In his address at a rally in Bastar on April 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked the Congress over corruption and said that “strict action was being taken against the corruption of Congress in the entire country including Chhattisgarh and those who cheat the youth are being investigated rapidly”.
The new BJP government has also backed it up with measures such as registering FIRs with the State Economic Offences Wing, one such FIR even mentioning the former CM.
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