The Income-Tax Department has issued a notice to Labour Minister G. Jayaram’s wife Renukamma for allegedly buying “30.83 acres of benami property” at Aspari village in Kurnool district.
According to agency reports, the department has also attached the property for 90 days.
Dismissing the allegations that he had purchased 180 acres of land in ‘benami’, the Minister, in a statement in Kurnool, said he owned lands in the district and cultivated them to generate income, and that he had purchased the lands in the names of his wife and his brother’s wife.
The agency reports said that the I-T Department had invoked Section 24 (3) of the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988, to attach property that was a part of the 180 acres purchased in the name of Mr. Jayaram’s relatives on March 2, 2020.
The land originally belonged to a company, Ittina, and I. Manjunath, who was a director, had come out of the company in 2009.
Mr. Jayaram is alleged to have purchased the land with the help of Mr. Manjunath.
Meanwhile, TDP leaders accused the Minister of having committed financial irregularities. As per the 2019 Election Affidavit, Mr. Jayaram had an income of ₹12,000 per month, they claimed, and wondered how he and his wife could purchase property worth ₹52.42 lakh with such meagre earnings.
The Income-Tax Department, after probing the land deal, came to the conclusion that the purchase amount was paid in cash, the reports said.
“It is evident that the sale is a benami transaction under Section 2(9)(A) of the PBPT Act. Going by the facts, and to rule out any possibility of selling the property or transferring it to a third person, an order has been passed to provisionally attach the land for 90 days,” the reports, quoting officials of the Income-Tax Department, said.
