Chandigarh: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) teams on Friday conducted searches at the residences and business premises of Punjab cabinet minister Sanjeev Arora, his family members and business associates at multiple places in the state as a part of an ongoing probe under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
Notably, the ED action comes two days after the federal agency ED carried out raids at the premises of several business entities owned by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Ashok Mittal who is also the party's deputy leader in Rajya Sabha.
According to information, the ED searches, which began early Friday morning simultaneously at about 13 locations in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Haryana’s Gurugram continued till the time of filing this report. The premises searched included the residence and offices of Arora, his son Kavya and business partners Hemant Sood and Chander Shekhar Aggarwal.
There were said to be allegations pertaining to round-tripping, betting links, illegal land-use changes and fraudulent sales bookings.
According to information, while Arora is promoter of Hampton Sky Realty Ltd, a company involved in large-scale real estate and infrastructure projects in Punjab, his son Kavya is its managing director.
Acknowledging the raids, Arora, who is currently travelling to Europe, said on X that as a responsible citizen, he will fully cooperate with the agencies and that he was confident that the truth will prevail.
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CM MANN HITS OUT AT BJP
Lashing out at the BJP, chief minister Bhagwant Mann alleged that the democracy in India has been under attack for some time now.
Addressing a hurriedly convened press conference, Mann said that non-BJP governments are being increasingly targeted with the ruling AAP in Punjab specifically being targeted. ``The government agencies are targeting the AAP because it is growing fast and has become a national party in a short span of 10 years’’, he said.
Mann held that the ED actions marked the beginning of the BJP poll preparations and that BJP is struggling to find 117 candidates for Punjab assembly polls, hence action on AAP leaders to ``scare’’ them.
