BHOPAL: The income-tax report may come in the way of Govind Singh Rajput waiting for swearing-in in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led cabinet.
The income-tax report especially mentions the name of the transport department from where huge amount of dough was taken.
The report says a sum of Rs 58 crore was taken from the department. Rajput was the transport minister in the Congress government.
At the time of forming the ministry, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave Rajput food and civil supplies department instead of the transport.
It was because of Rajput’s stubbornness that he was given the revenue and transport department at the time of ministry expansion.
During the by-elections, Rajput had to resign from the cabinet, because he was a minister without being an elected member of the House for over six months.
He is waiting to become a minister. It is because of the dispute over the transport department that the ministry expansion is delaying.
The BJP organisation does not want that Rajput should get the transport department.
Rajya Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia has, however, stuck to his guns about giving the department to Rajput, despite the income-tax report.
The party organisation may make Scindia agree to keep Rajput away from the department.
Instead of Rajput, Tulsi Silawat may be given the transport department which has earned a bad name in the past five years.
Extortion at the check posts has become an everyday affair. Truck operators have also complained about it.
Union minister Nitin Gadkari closed the check-posts in the state in 2016 because of the transport department’s bad name.
Those check-posts were reopened in 2018. As a result of internal squabbling in the transport department, a video of the then transport commissioner V Madhukumar went viral. In the video, Madhukumar was shown taking envelopes from police officers when he was IG in Ujjain.
After the video had gone viral, Madhukumar was removed. His name has been mentioned in the income-tax report.
Scindia has played an important role in posting the present transport commissioner Mukesh Jain.
Rajput is also close to Scindia. Against this backdrop, the income-tax report may be useful to BJP for not giving transport department to Rajput.
