In pre-dawn raids on food grain suppliers of the mid-day meal (MMD) scheme for school children, Income Tax (IT) Department sleuths swooped down on four locations in Mumbai of Aurangabad-based kin of Shiv Sena leader. The grain trader, identified as Satish Vyas is suspected to be the beneficiary of fictitious midday meals provided to schools during the COVID pandemic lockdown.
MMD scheme promises nutritional meals to children attending school. The Centre and State share the costs of the scheme and is implemented by the states to ensure proper meals for children and an equivalent amount of food grains is provided to fill the stomach of primary and upper primary students.
About 1.08 crore beneficiary children in Maharashtra were deprived of the MMD scheme during the COVID pandemic.
The Income Tax Department had received specific inputs in the MMD scam following which the agency proceeded with its investigation and carried out the raids.
“A total of 53 locations were simultaneously raided involving over 300 IT officials in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Delhi on traders supplying food grains for the midday meal scheme,” confirmed a senior tax official supervising the raids.
Prominent Aurangabad-based trader Satish Vyas heading several businesses like Jagrut Pharmaceuticals Private Limited, Jagrut Hotels Private Limited and Shri Sai Transport And Courier Private Limited premises were raided by IT officials in Mumbai, Pune and Aurangabad.
“As COVID lockdown disrupted life and livelihood, mid-day meal scheme was supposed to be a big help for poor families to feed their children. The ration meant for feeding poor children was diverted to NGOs registered with fake documents. Food grains were pilferaged by traders for profits,” said the tax official probing the scam.
Meanwhile, another team of Income Tax officials launched raids in multiple states as part of a tax evasion probe against registered unrecognized political parties (RUPP) for alleged dubious funding.
These raids were conducted in Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana and Rajasthan in coordinated action launched by the tax department against the RUPPs, their linked entities, operators and others.
The taxmen on the recommendation of the Election Commission which had recently struck off 87 entities from its list of RUPP, found that the entities were found non-existent during physical verification.
RUPP are either newly registered parties or those that have not secured enough percentage of votes in the assembly or general elections to become a state party. Most of these political parties had never contested elections since being registered and were considered unrecognized parties.
