Fresh income tax blitz on CWG contractors

Income Tax officials today raided the offices of Shiv Naresh Sports Pvt Ltd and Satya Prakash Construction in Delhi as part of its investigations into allegations of corruption in the preparations for the Commonwealth Games.

The nation-wide raids on the premises of the contractors began early on Thursday morning. Apart from the Delhi national capital region (NCR), raids were also being carried out in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore at the time of reporting. Over 50 teams of IT officials are involved in the raids at about 40 locations across the country.

While Shiv Naresh Sports had laid the synthetic tracks for the Commonwealth Games, Satya Prakash Construction was involved landscaping.

Officials said that the Income Tax department would specifically look into the contracts awarded by the CWG Organising Committee and the role of its officials and contractors including charges of bribing.

Reports say the I-T department officials are seizing documents related to all the tenders and contracts that were granted to various consortiums for the Games to detect possible evasion of taxes through over-invoicing and fudging of accounts.

The department had on 19 October carried out similar searches on four major consortiums, including those related to BJP member Sudhanshu Mittal, which had bagged contracts worth Rs700 crore. Mittal is considered to be a close associate of former BJP President Rajnath Singh and late party leader Pramod Mahajan.