The land developers, who were raided by the Income Tax officials on Tuesday reportedly enjoy political patronage of not just JD (S), but also their coalition partner - Bharatiya Janata Party and the Opposition, Congress.
According to highly placed sources, one of them is allegedly an associate of the BJP and another one shares close proximity with JD (S) and Congress.
Though sources in the I-T department stoutly denied that the raids had anything to do with politics, political leaders, especially from the JD (S), termed it as “political vendetta and witch hunting.”

Cash, gold
Manjunath Gottegere, speaking to Deccan Herald on Wednesday said, “I’m a small person yet they raided me because I’m a JD (S) party worker. Congress is behind it 200 per cent,” he alleged.
Giving details of the seizure, he said the I-T sleuths, entered his house around 5 am on Tuesday and seized Rs 8,98,820 cash, out of which they returned Rs 1,48,820 after he asked them to give him some money back for his expenses. “They also seized two-and-a-half to three kilos of gold and silver jewellry and documents of my seven-acre agricultural land in Anekal,” said Mr Gottigere.
And it was not the first time that these developers were raided by the I-T officials. The department had reportedly raided one of them eight to 10 months ago. “This was the second operation carried out by the IT officials,” said a placed source.
The search and seizure operations, which started in the wee hours of Tuesday, continued till Wednesday. Unconfirmed reports say that over Rs 100 crore hard cash was seized during the raids, apart from the huge number of incriminating documents and property transactions, investments, which run into several crores.
When contacted the I-T officials said that it would take them some time to get the real figures of the amount seized. “There are several documents, which we need to go through. We will also have to verify if there are any benami transactions and the amount of concealment,” said a source.
Under the I-T Act, after the verification, the investigation wing will send the assessment record to the Assessment wing of the I-T department. “Based on that, they will issue notices to the tax evaders. The penalty levied, as per the Act, is 300 per cent of the concealed income,” said a senior officer.
None of the three land developers, who were raided — Reddy Veeranna, Kupendra Reddy and Rama Reddy were available for comments. Their offices, when contacted, refused to connect to them.

Fringe players
A real estate industry analyst pointed out that none of these realtors, are big players. “Most of the big companies keep their books of accounts, but it’s not the case with the unorganised sector. Ironically, these fringe players are the ones who actually control the City’s real estate market,” he said.
According to industry sources, there are many fringe players who enter into sale agreements with customers, only to transfer their rights in the name of others later. In effect, they are re-sellers, who amass profits in the range of 200 per cent and above in the process, but the profits are rarely accounted for, sources said.
Industry expert and lawyer Selvakumar said that the raids had come at the right time because they would ensure that developers kept their books of accounts. “These are routine raids but what’s disturbing is the raid on a government official, who should have acted as a role model for the public,” he said.