Ahead of Assembly elections, I-T raids on 11 PWD contractors

Income Tax department raided several premises belonging to private contractors in poll-bound Karnataka on Tuesday.

The raids were conducted in Mysuru and Bengaluru. Sources in the I-T department said that searches are being carried out on the premises belonging to 11 contractors, one in Bengaluru and 10 in Mysuru.

Though initial reports were that a minister’s house was also raided at Vijayanagar in Mysuru, the I-T department clarified that “no minister’’ was covered in the raids. The I-T department confirmed that raids are being conducted in Mysuru and Bengaluru on some of the contractors. Most of them are PWD contractors and allegedly got huge bills cleared.

The I-T department had sought details of all the bills cleared by six state government departments in the last quarter of the financial year 2017-18.

The I-T department did not confirm if Tuesday’s raids were a follow-up to the information it obtained from the state government. It was learnt that a majority of the huge payments cleared pertained to projects either partially completed or yet to be taken up by a few PWD contractors.