The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned K Kavitha, the daughter of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, in the Delhi Excise Policy case.
Officials said the ED has summoned Kavitha in the Delhi Excise Policy case on Thursday. Her father KCR —as K Chandrashekhar Rao is called— is the chief of Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) and has hinted at national ambitions over the past year.
The ED is investigating the money laundering aspects of the Delhi Excise Policy case while the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is probing the criminal aspects. It's alleged that there were irregularities in the formulation and implementation of now-scrapped Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22.
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The ED on Tuesday also questioned jailed Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia in the case. He was arrested by the CBI last month. He held the excise portfolio in Arvind Kejriwal's Delhi Cabinet. Following his arrest, he resigned from the Cabinet.
While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and even AAP's fellow Opposition party Congress say CBI-ED probes are a result of AAP's corrupt practices, the AAP maintains that the BJP-led Union government is using federal agencies to target political opponents.
Kavitha is an MLC of his father KCR's BRS party. She has been called so that she can be confronted with Hyderabad-based businessman Arun Ramchandra Pillai, an alleged frontman of the 'south group', who was arrested by the ED on Monday.
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The ED had earlier said that Pillai "represented the south group", an alleged liquor cartel linked to Kavitha and others.
The 'south group, according to the agency, "comprises" Sarath Reddy (promoter of Aurobindo Pharma), Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy (YSR Congress MP from Ongole Lok Sabha seat), Kavitha and others.
Kavitha had said she would be in Delhi for holding a one-day hunger strike at the Jantar Mantar on March 10 to seek the introduction of the Women's Reservation Bill in the upcoming session of Parliament.
The BRS leader has been questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in this case earlier.
It is alleged that the Delhi government's excise policy for 2021-22 to grant licences to liquor traders allowed cartelisation and favoured certain dealers, who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) here.
The policy was later scrapped and the Delhi Lt Governor had recommended a CBI probe following which the ED registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
(With PTI inputs)
