Congress claims diary with notations of payment to high command is "planted"

BENGALURU: Congress MLC and Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah’s parliamentary secretary K Govindaraju has said that a diary recording payments to the party High Command, purportedly found in his house during a raid by the income tax department in 2016, is not his.

The BJP, led by its Karnataka unit president B S Yeddyurappa, has gone to town on this diary, which reportedly shows a record of payments made to DVGS, Office of RG, Office of SG and AICC, among others. Yeddyurappa has claimed that the total payments were for Rs 1,000 crore.

The initials have been taken to mean AICC general secretary in charge of Karnataka Digvijay Singh, office of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and office of party president Sonia Gandhi.

“I said even during the investigation that this diary is not mine. That handwriting is also not mine,” Govindaraju told ET. “The diary may have been planted in my house. It is mysterious how the IT department found it there.”

Congress ministers in Karnataka who are moneybags or have access to sources of money have to been warned to be extra careful, particularly after small scale industries minister Ramesh Jharkiholi was raided by the IT recently. The Jharkiholi family has extensive interests in the sugar industry and has been a source of funding for the Congress party.

“It means that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is directly using the IT department in his plan for Congress-mukht Bharat. All of us are worried that the IT may be used to plant things in our properties and that we will be targeted,” a senior minister told ET.

Congress’s Karnataka unit working president and AICC spokesperson Dinesh Gundu Rao has accused Yeddyurappa of “losing his mental balance” and raised queries on why the IT department was specifically targeting his party leaders. Congress MLC V S Ugrappa, also close to Siddaramaiah, has questioned how Yeddyurappa or any BJP leader got the access to a diary purportedly seized by the IT department.