Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav on March 13 took a swipe at the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation over the recent raids in locations linked to him in the land-for-job-scam case, asking the agencies if his face resembled that of businessman Adani.
The agencies had recently raided his residence in Delhi, locations linked to his family members along with those of others linked with his father and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad in the case.
Mr. Yadav also dared the agencies to make public the “seizure list” of the raid held at his residence, and said that he himself would make it public otherwise.
“The CBI and ED has either got confused or does my face resemble that of Adani? They are propagating a fake publicity that real Adani is me. Overlooking a scam of ₹80,000 crore, they have been conducting raids at my places for years and have got nothing,” Mr. Yadav said while addressing the media at Patna airport and later on the State Assembly premises.
“Thenga mila hai mere yaha [they have got nothing from my place]”, he said. Mr. Yadav also said that after the success of the mahagathbandhan’s Purnia rally, the BJP has got nervous. “I had even said in the rally that such raids would be in the offing now,” he added.
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In an apparent taunt to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the deputy CM further said, “We are not ‘fake entire political science people’. We are people with real public science, socialist people.” Mr. Yadav also said he understood the chronology of events leading to the raids at his and his family’s places.
Questions raised
Talking about the raids and the agencies’ claim that they have detected proceeds of crimes worth over ₹600 crore from the locations, Mr. Yadav asked, “What happened to the sensational and headline-making claims of recovering ₹8,000 crore in a similar raid in 2017?”. “First, they [the investigating agencies] should furnish details of the ₹8,000 crore, but you all know what happened after that. Nothing happened,” said Mr. Yadav.
Taking a dig at the CBI officials involved in the raid at his Delhi residence, he said, “They had finished the raid at my house in just half-an-hour but the officials stayed on awaiting clearance from above.”
He added that the BJP government at the Centre was desperate as they knew they were going to be ousted in the 2024 parliamentary elections and are unable to digest that they had been ousted them from the Bihar Government.
