According to officials cited by news agency PTI, the Enforcement Directorate raided the home of Harak Singh Rawat, a former minister and leader of the Uttarakhand Congress, in connection with a money laundering case. The ED was raiding over ten locations in Uttarakhand and the Delhi-NCR. According to PTI, searches were carried out at several locations in Chandigarh, Delhi, and Uttarakhand.
The “fraudulent” acquisition of land in the Dehradun district for an educational institution run by a trust connected to the politician and his family, as well as the “illegal” felling of trees and construction in the state’s Corbett Tiger Reserve, are the two cases and allegations that are connected to the ED investigation into Harak Singh Rawat and his associates.
According to PTI, there was also coverage of the Doon Institute of Medical Sciences’ grounds and two people, Virender Kandari and Narender K. Walia.
Harak Singh Rawat left the state cabinet and the Bharatiya Janata Party primary membership for six years because of “anti-party activities” and then joined the Congress prior to the 2022 Uttarakhand assembly election. The Uttarakhand election was won by the BJP for the second time in a row.
The Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court found the former Uttarakhand forest minister Harak Singh Rawat and the divisional forest officer (DFO) Kishan Chand guilty last year of a number of illegal activities, including construction associated with a tiger safari in 2021 in the Pakhro and Morghatti forest areas of the Kalagarh Forest Division of the Corbett Tiger Reserve.
The committee found Harak Singh Rawat and Chand guilty of building operations related to the tiger safari and other illegal undertakings in the Pakhro and Morghatti forest regions in response to a plea from counsel Gaurav Kumar Bansal. The report was turned over to the Supreme Court.
Additionally, it had authorised the Uttarakhand Vigilance Department to pursue legal action against the forest officers implicated in the violations.
Accusations made against Rawat Harak Singh :
According to allegations, Deepti Rawat, the wife of Rawat, and a few others obtained the aforementioned land by “fraudulent” means, and the Shrimati Poorna Devi Memorial Trust built the Doon Institute of Medical Sciences building on it.
In relation to the purported “irregularities” in the tiger reserve during Harak Singh Rawat’s time as the state forest minister in the previous BJP government, the Uttarakhand government’s vigilance agency also conducted a raid on him last year.
In the past, Harak Singh Rawat has been a member of the Bahujan Samaj Party in addition to the Congress and the BJP.
In undivided Uttar Pradesh, Harak Singh Rawat began his political career with the BJP. Two years later, he joined the BSP, then the Congress.
In 2016, Harak Singh Rawat defected from the previous Harish Rawat cabinet and joined the BJP, having served for eighteen years in the Congress. Due to his apparent insistence on receiving party tickets for both himself and his daughter-in-law for the assembly elections, he was expelled from the BJP in 2022.
