The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday charged Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and his wife Pratibha Singh, who is fighting the Lok Sabha election from the Mandi parliamentary seat, with again filing wrong affidavits and hiding important information.
State BJP leaders Ganesh Dutt and H.N. Kashyap said Mrs. Pratibha Singh, who had claimed that she did not know Vakamulla Chandrashekhar, promoter of a hydro electric project in Himachal Pradesh, had later on accepted that she had taken loans worth crores of rupees from him. The BJP leaders said Mrs. Singh, in her latest affidavit, had accepted that she had returned a loan of Rs. 1.5 crore to Mr. Chandrashekhar and Mr. Virbhadra Singh had returned Rs. 50 lakh to him in a span of just 9 months.
Giving details of Mrs. Singh’s income, assets and liabilities, the BJP said the duo had shown this year an income of HUF of Rs. 35.35 lakhs. The 2013 affidavit of Mrs. Singh had not shown any HUF income. The couple, without disclosing any source of income, had shown an increase of Rs. 52.67 lakh with a gross income of Rs. 85 lakh in just one year and their assets had gone up to Rs. 34.82 crore.
The BJP asked how the liabilities of the couple got reduced by more than Rs. 2 crore in the past nine months without any increase in their known sources of income. The BJP, when approached the electoral officer of Mandi complaining of this discrepancy in their income, was told that it was not in his preview and that her nomination could not be challenged at this stage. The BJP legal cell was planning to move the court, said Mr. Dutt.
The BJP leaders said the party’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, would address three rallies on April 29 in Palampur, Mandi and Solan. The State has four Lok Sabha seats and Mr. Modi had already addressed a rally in Sujanpur town covering the Hamirpur parliamentary seat from where BJP leader Anurag Thakur is seeking re-election.
