BJP leader denies allegations

A day after the income tax department raided his house and business establishments, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sudhanshu Mittal, on Tuesday, denied allegations of corruption levelled against him and his family.

A day after the income tax department raided his house and business establishments, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sudhanshu Mittal, on Tuesday, denied allegations of corruption levelled against him and his family.

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“I have just been made a political scapegoat,” Mittal told mediapersons at a press conference. He said a “political witch hunt” was undertaken in the name of investigations into the Commonwealth Games irregularities.

“Of the total expenditure of R77,000 crore, my company, Delhi Tents and Decorative, did business worth only R29 lakh. And, now I am held as the fountainhead of corruption. Is it fair?” Mittal asked. He also said he was ready for any probe.

Mittal said he joined Deepali Designs — the company which executed contracts worth

R230 crore for the Games — as an independent director in February “before the company did any bidding for contracts”, and resigned in July.

He said he does not have any share in Deepali Designs, and neither did anyone from his immediate family.

Mittal, a Delhi businessman, shot to fame in the BJP because of his closeness to the late Pramod Mahajan, the BJP’s principal strategist.

Congress takes a jibe at Mittal

“What political witch hunt could happen against a person whose existence is not recognised by the chief of his own party. BJP President Nitin Gadkari ... asked who was Sudhanshu Mittal when asked about him,” Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said in response to Mittal’s claims that he was a victim of a political witch hunt.

With inputs from PTI