Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge came out in support of Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Wednesday over the ED raids against his relatives and said this “vendetta” will help the party emerge victorious in the upcoming state Assembly polls.”ED raids on the relatives of Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi show how unnerved the BJP is about a performing and popular Dalit CM,” he wrote on Twitter.”People of Punjab are waiting to teach BJP and their B-teams a befitting lesson. Such vendetta will only lead to a landslide victory for Congress in Punjab,” Kharge said.
Earlier, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi said ED raids had become the BJP’s favourite weapon as it had things to hide.”Conducting an ED raid is BJP’s favourite weapon because they themselves have things to hide. Not everyone is like you. We have #NoFear. #BJPFakeRaid,” he had said in a tweet on Tuesday.The Congress had dubbed the raids as “fake raids” to intimidate the party in the run-up to the February 20 Punjab polls, but had asserted that neither the party nor Channi would be cowed down by such moves.It had also alleged that the ED raids were an assault on Punjab and Punjabiyat, while claiming that Channi’s relatives had nothing to do with the accused in the case.The ED on Wednesday said it has seized cash amounting to over Rs 10 crore, including about Rs 8 crore from a relative of Channi, during raids conducted in connection with an anti-money laundering investigation against illegal sand-mining operations in poll-bound Punjab.In a statement, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said “incriminating” documents related to “illegal” sand mining and property transactions, mobile phones, gold worth more than Rs 21 lakh and a Rolex watch worth Rs 12 lakh were also seized during the searches that ended on Wednesday.
