Chennai: A week after the Assembly passed the Tamil Nadu Lokayukta Act, 2018, DMK has approached Madras High Court seeking a direction to the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC) to conduct a probe against Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam and his family members on a charge of amassing assets disproportionate to known sources of income.
In the petition, R.S. Bharathi, DMK MP, and the organising secretary of the party, has alleged that OPS had abused his official position and amassed wealth in his name, family members and their benamies.
Bharathi said OPS made false declarations before the Income Tax authorities and Election Commission officials. Hence, he is liable to be punished under Income Tax Act, Representation of People Act, Indian Penal Code, Prohibition of Benami transactions Act, Prevention of Money Laundering Act and Prevention of Corruption Act.
Elaborating further, Bharathi said that in 2016 OPS declared his election affidavit that his income for 2014-15 was '5,80,875 whereas his basic salary as an MLA came to the tune of '6,60,000. During this period he was also the Chief Minister and hence he would have received more salary. Bharathi has alleged that during the same period he had purchased one Toyota Innova car worth '17,85,655.
The MP said the AIADMK leader owns lands in several places. However, he had not disclosed details of some of the lands and the income out of lands was also suppressed. This must be investigated, he said.
Bharathi also alleged that properties owned by his wife kept increasing. She is a homemaker and has no source of income. His properties worth over Rs 140 crore were leased out to his benamis. The companies owned by his sons P. Raveendranath Kumar and V. Jayapradeep purchased several acres of land valued over Rs 68 crore and they are also directors of several building construction firms.
Bharathi said he made a complaint on the corruption charges to DVAC on March 10, 2018 to register a case and conduct investigation. The matter will come up for hearing before the court shortly.
On July 10, the Assembly passed the Tamil Nadu Lokayukta Act, which would pave way for the creation of the body that would look into graft charges against government servants. Its jurisdiction would cover serving and former ministers, sitting or ex-MLAs and state employees.
