9

May

Arrest of Jharkhand Minister’s OSD Puts Congress on the Backfoot

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Today’s Edition

New Delhi, 9 May 2024

 

Jharkhand’s minister Alamgir Alam’s OSD-cum-PA Sanjeev Lal and Lal’s aide Jehangir Alam’s arrest on Tuesday last in the Rs. 35 crore cash seizure case has put the Congress on the backfoot in this election-bound state.

Alamgir is the leader of the Congress Legislative Party and MLA of Pakur. This is Alamgir’s fourth term as MLA from Pakur. The enforcement directorate (ED) made this seizure on Monday. It raided about five places but the major seizure was allegedly made from Jehangir.

Article at a Glance

The arrest of Jharkhand Minister Alamgir Alam's OSD-cum-PA Sanjeev Lal and his aide Jehangir Alam in a Rs. 35 crore cash seizure case has put the Congress on the backfoot in the election-bound state.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) seized the cash from Jehangir's flat, allegedly collected as "cut money" and commission in tenders. The Congress is struggling to respond, with the state president downplaying the incident and the minister issuing a cautious statement.

The opposition BJP is capitalizing on the issue, demanding action against the minister. The case has sparked a political storm, with the Congress facing heat ahead of the elections.

The former chief minister of Jharkhand belonging to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha Hemant Soren is also in jail in a money laundering case. The ED also arrested him. Hemant Soren and JMM allege that Hemant has been framed wrongly as a political vendetta.

The money was seized from Jehangir Alam’s flat which hails from Chatra. He too is reported to be close to the minister. Interestingly, Sanjeev Lal has reportedly refused to accept that the money recovered from Jehangir belonged to him while Jehangir accepted that Lal had put the money in his flat. While there has been no official briefing of this case, ED sources provided the information to the media unofficially.

The ED sources claimed that the seized money was collected as cut money and commission in tenders and also from the racket of transfer-posting. The seizure of cash continued for the second consecutive day on Tuesday. This time more than Rs. two crore was also recovered from one contractor Rajiv Kumar Singh. ED claimed that Singh had given Rs. ten crores to Sanjeev Lal.

The seizure of money is related to investigating the money laundering case against Veerendra Ram. Veerendra was the chief engineer in Alamgir’s department. Veerendra was reportedly close to Alamgir.

The ED wanted a remand of ten days for both the accused but the PMLA court granted a remand of six days. Both were sent to the local Hotwar jail.

While the opposition BJP is quite aggressive in this matter, Congress seems to be on the back foot. The state president of Congress Rajesh Thakur said that it was not correct to see the seizure of money in today’s context as Sanjeev had been PA to minister CP Singh and Vimala Singh also.

BJP leader Babu Lal Marandi asked the chief minister Champai Soren to get an FIR as he claimed that the letter written by the state’s chief secretary was recovered from the bundles of notes.

Alamgir Alam is a minister of rural development in the state. In this regard, he has issued a short statement saying that Sanjeev Lal is a government employee who has served two other ministers earlier. He said that it would be proper to comment only after the ED completes its investigation.

As a fallout of this seizure Alamgir Alam was not seen in the election meeting of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi. Leader of Opposition in the Jharkhand Assembly, Amar Kumar Bauri raised this issue as to why Alamgir was not seen in the election meeting where Rahul Gandhi delivered a speech. He asked Rahul to tell him about the relationship between minister Alamgir Alam with Jehangir Alam.

It may be noted here that earlier in December 2023, around Rs. 300 crore was seized from different locations of Congress Rajya Sabha member Dhiraj Sahu. The Income Tax Department had seized the money from Sahu’s locations in Odisha and Jharkhand.

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