Shimla: Mocking about tons of apples having been ferried on scooters, oil tankers and a Santro car as cited in media reports, leader of opposition Mr Prem Kumar Dhumal a little while ago demanded that chief minister Virbhadra Singh should resign or be dismissed for holding of an impartial enquiry into the serious allegations leveled against him.
At a crowded media conference, Mr Dhumal said that the chief minister should come clean on what is the total amount of loans raised by him and what was the mode of payment adopted by his family members for buying shares in Tarini Infrastructure, an important piece of information that Mrs Pratibha Singh had not revealed in her income and assets affidavit to the election commission when she filed her nomination papers for the Mandi Parliamentary seat last year.
“The media is making new revelations every day,” he said.
“One report has cited that income tax officers are stumped upon learning that papers submitted with sale proceeds of apples sold, show that tons of apples were transported on vehicles bearing numbers of scooters, oil tankers and small cars. In the early 90’s as an MP we had come across a similar case where cows, bulls and buffaloes were shown to have been transported on vehicles bearing numbers of scooters in Lalu Prasad’s governed Bihar state,” said Mr Dhumal.
He added that the explanations being offered for obtaining unsecured loans were contradictory, the numbers did not add up and no sound explanation had been put forward by the chief minister or his wife from approaching a private individual for loans instead of obtaining one from a bank and that too at a time when the family had Rs 9.5 crores of funds lying in their accounts.
He also asked the chief minister to come clean on the founding of Maple Destination Private Ltd, a company said to be owned by the children of Mr Virbhadra Singh.
In the income and asset affidavits filed before the election commission filed by the chief minister and his wife, the children are shown as dependents with no income of their own but documents now reveal that Maple Destination Pvt Ltd is a company floated by the children of the chief minister and it has dealings with Traini Infrastructure, a company floated by Vakamulla Chandrashekar, the Hyderabad based businessman, said Dhumal.
As Editor, Ravinder Makhaik leads a team of media professionals at Hill Post.
Spanning a career of over two decades in mass communication, as a Documentary Filmmaker, TV journalist, Print Media journalist and with Online & Social Media, he brings with him a vast experience. He lives in Shimla.
