BHOPAL: First Information Reports (FIRs) have been lodged in multiple cities of Madhya Pradesh, against senior Congress leaders, including party national general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and state party chief Kamal Nath, for alleging “50% commission corruption” on the basis of a “fake letter” in the poll-bound BJP-ruled state.
The FIRs have been lodged against Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, national general secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh, MPCC president Kamal Nath, former state Congress chief Arun Yadav and senior leader Shobha Oza, on the complaint of ruling BJP leaders.
All the FIRs also include the name of one Gyanedra Awasthi, whose name figures as the sender in the letter, which is being called by BJP and the government as fake.
While the complaints from BJP leaders have been received by police in many districts, the FIRs have been lodged in multiple cities, including the state capital Bhopal, financial capital Indore, Rewa in Vindhya region and Gwalior.
The FIRs have been lodged under IPC Section 420 (cheating), 469 (forgery with the purpose of harming reputation), 500 and 501 (defamation) on Saturday and Sunday and investigations are underway.
Importantly, senior Congress leaders, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Kamal Nath and Jairam Ramesh, have in the last couple of days, been posting on the social media site X (formerly twitter) news reports about a group of petty contractors led by one Gyanendra Awasthi, writing a letter to the Chief Justice of MP High Court. The Congress leaders claim that in the letter, the contractors’ outfit has alleged that they have to pay up to 50% as commission to get their due payments released from the state government.
However, the state government and ruling BJP, have claimed that the letter on whose basis the news has been reported in a section of media, is actually fake, as the sender of the letter (Gyanendra Awasthi), the outfit of petty contractors and the address of the outfit, all doesn’t exist anywhere in Gwalior.
According to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, “On Saturday morning when I came to know about the letter doing rounds of social media and the tweets of Congress leaders based on it, I asked the state’s intelligence set-up to probe it. The probe established that the letter was fake, as the sender, the outfit of petty contractors and the sender’s address, all didn’t exist. Just like Karnataka, where the Congress launched the false propaganda of 40% commission, the Congress is using the fake letter to spread canard and defame the BJP and the MP government through identical tweets of 50% commission corruption. Legal action will be taken against all those involved in spreading the false information.”
Meanwhile, reacting to the FIRs against him and other senior leaders of Congress, the state Congress chief Kamal Nath said, “Everyone knows that the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government is knee-deep in corruption. But instead of probing the complaint of corruption, FIRs have been lodged against us at the behest of the state government. I appeal to all Congress workers to fight against corruption and unseat the 50% commission rule from the state.”
While Congress workers protested in Bhopal against the FIRs, the state party’s media wing head KK Mishra said, “We’ll soon release the long list of scams in the last 2.5 years of BJP rule in the state. We’ll see after that how many more FIRs are lodged against us.”