I-T Dept raids Aaditya Thackeray's close aide Rahul Kanal

Income tax sleuths on Tuesday carried out searches across offices and homes of Shiv Sena office-bearer Rahul Kanal, who is said to be a close aide of Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray, and locations of a cable operator and an RTO officer, who are allegedly linked to state transport minister Anil Parab.

Aaditya, son of Shiv Sena president and Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, dubbed the searches by the I-T department on Kanal as 'invasion by Delhi' ahead of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections.

Kanal is a member of the Shirdi Saibaba Temple Trust.

The cable operator and the RTO officer are allegedly linked to Parab, a senior Sena leader.

A series of searches were carried out at the home and office of Kanal, an income tax official said without giving details such as what has the searches yielded.

The searches were also carried out on locations of cable operator Sadanand Kadam and RTO officer Bajrang Kharmate.

Sources said taxmen searched a total of 20 premises of these people of which 12 are in Mumbai and the rest in Pune.

The searches on Kanal are related to the ongoing probe into the BMC standing committee chairman and senior Sena leader Yashwant Jadhav, who was last month searched for alleged non-disclosure of assets in income tax filing.

The income tax department had claimed to have found Rs 130 crore worth of unaccounted properties with him and his wife along with evidence of hawala deals.

The action on Kharmate is the continuation of the ED action probe on his alleged connection with Sachin Waze, currently in jail in connection with the 'Antilia' bomb scare case and the murder of Thane businessman Mansukh Hiran.

Jadhav came under the tax scanner over complaints of corruption in awarding of contracts from the BMC standing committee.

Last Thursday, the department had said it found proof of around three dozen properties, worth Rs 130 crore during raids on properties linked to Jadhav.

It includes properties acquired either by Jadhav and family or their associates or benami.

They also found evidence of their involvement in international hawala transactions and routing of ill-gotten money to certain foreign jurisdictions.

Jadhav is the chairman of the BMC standing committee and his wife is the MLA from the Byculla constituency.

Aaditya alleged that the I-T 'raids' showed the misuse of Central agencies by the ruling party (Bharatiya Janata Party).

"Maharashtra in the past had witnessed invasion (by outsiders). This is an invasion by Delhi. As elections are approaching, the Centre, which is scared of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, has deployed Central probe agencies. Similar raids were conducted where the elections took place," Aaditya told reporters.

He alleged that Central probe agencies have become 'BJP's poll campaign agencies'. Therefore, similar raids are being carried out in Maharashtra.

"But Maharashtra will neither be scared nor will it bow down (before Delhi)," he said.

Hitting back at Aaditya, Leader of Opposition in the Maharashtra Council Pravin Darekar said that BJP leaders in Maharashtra are being harassed by the state government for trivial matters.

"He (Aaditya) has the freedom to level whatever allegations. It is rubbish to link every raid of Central probe agencies with BJP. Let the agencies do their job," said the BJP leader.

Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule launched a veiled attack on BJP saying central agencies are being misused against its political rivals, which does not suit the culture of Maharashtra and the rest of the country.

Without naming the BJP, Sule also said that the people who have consistently been opposing Emergency only are behaving similarly.

"Central agencies are being misused against those who oppose them (the BJP). It is quite unfortunate," Sule said.