MP: EC nabs employee of firm with links to Chouhan for carrying lakhs

An election commission vigilance team on Wednesday nabbed an employee of Dilip Buildcon for carrying Rs. 5 lakh in cash after intercepting his car on the Indore-Bhopal Highway.

An election commission vigilance team on Wednesday nabbed an employee of Dilip Buildcon for carrying Rs. 5 lakh in cash after intercepting his car on the Indore-Bhopal Highway.

Dilip Buildcon’s owner Dilip Suryavanshi is considered close to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and the firm was named by Congress leader Digvijaya Singh as having paid for burqas for the BJP’s ‘Karyakarta Mahakumbh’ rally in September this year.

With the poll code in force, such amounts of cash are typically under the scanner of the poll watchdog for their potential for misuse by political parties. Wednesday’s arrest was made after AM Qureshi, a project coordinator at the firm, failed to ‘satisfactorily’ explain the purpose of carrying the cash.

Qureshi had claimed that the money he was carrying was meant to be distributed as wages among the labourers employed at a project.

Dewas collector Mahesh Agarwal alerted the income tax department and said an investigation was underway.