NANDED, 10 Nov: Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Thursday claimed that Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut’s bail order indicated that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was a “political weapon” in the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and union Home Minister Amit Shah.
A special court in Mumbai on Wednesday granted bail to Rajya Sabha member Raut in a money laundering case related to the Patra Chawl redevelopment project, saying his arrest was “illegal” and a “witch-hunt.”
Addressing a press conference during the Congress’s ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Rahul Gandhi here in Maharashtra, Ramesh said the special court has made scathing observations and the language used is clear that the central probe agency is being “used to intimidate, threaten and create fear among political opponents.”
“Raut’s bail order shows that the Enforcement Directorate is not an independent institution but a political weapon in the hands of Modi and Shah,” Ramesh claimed.
He said there was no case to arrest Raut, who is the parliamentarian and the executive editor of ‘Saamana’, the mouthpiece of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena faction.
“We hope Sanjay Raut will continue to target the central government over different issues,” Ramesh said.
The former union minister also alleged that the BJP was trying to destroy the cooperative sector, in which Maharashtra is a leader.
“The cooperative sector is being centralised in the hands of the union home minister,” he claimed.
It is being done to hurt the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which are strong in this sector, he said.
“During the UPA rule, there was no tax on the cooperative sector, which changed after the Modi government took charge,” he said. (PTI)
