Election commission cancelled by polls in RK Nagar , Chennai to be held on Wednesday after the cash-for-vote allegations surfaced. Income Tax raids in Chennai found money was distributed to voters.
Congress leader P Chidambaram taunted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked if the money distributed was white money. Targeting Modi for his demonetisation drive he said “We were told demonetisation has put an end to black money”. Reacting to the comments Venkaiah Naidu alleged that black money surfaced during UPA government tenure
After the demise of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who represented it for two terms, the RK Nagar position was left vacant.
The IT officials alleged that VK Sasikala faction devised a strategy to buy the voters. As per the strategy the constituency is divided into 256 segments to reach 85percent of voters. The outlay of the activity was rupees 89 crores, as each voter was supposed to be padi 4000rupees. Chief Minister E Palaniswami, Forest Minister Dindigul Sreenivasan and Finance Minister Jayakumar including four others were given targets to woe voters. Palaniswami was supposed to distribute 13.27crore rupees to 33000 voters.
The information was obtained from the seized documents during IT raids in more than 35 places including properties of the state health minister C Vijayabaskar.
