Record cash seizure in Northeast during election

Assam polls
Representative photo

Since the announcement of General Elections 2019 on March 12, the Directorate of Income Tax (Investigation), North East Region has been able to seize Rs 5.84 crores from raids in various places which is 482 per cent more than the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

In 2014, the cash seizure was Rs 1.21 crores. Over 160 I-T sleuths have been deployed at strategic locations across Northeast, including Air Intelligence Teams at 12 airports. This has resulted in all time high cash seizures of unexplained money during any election period in the Northeast.

Cash seized in just 27 days of election time enforcement is more than 50 per cent of unexplained cash seized in whole of financial year 2017-18 and even exceeds seizure amount in entire pre-election period of FY 2018-19. Last polling date in the Northeast is April 23.

As a first, the directorate has also initiated investigation into hundreds of suspicious cash deposits and withdrawals above Rs 10 lakhs through banks across Northeast and is being assisted by Financial Intelligence Unit of India, RBI and 68 banks in this mammoth exercise. The directorate is going to use ‘Big-Data’ mining and analytics tools to identify high risk transactions. It is expected that investigation of these transactions may unearth substantial black money.

Over Rs 10 crore cash, 1 lakh litres liquor seized in Assam

Police and Election Commission officials in Assam have seized cash amounting to Rs 10,21,06,521 and 1,51,619.4 litres of liquor valued at Rs. 1,37,30,925, ahead of the first round of Lok Sabha polls in the state, officials said on Wednesday.

Five – Tezpur, Kaliabar, Jorhat, Dibrugarh and Lakhimpur – of the state’s 14 constituencies are going to polls in the first phase on Thursday.

Officials at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer Assam said that there are 9,574 polling stations across the five constituencies while a total of 42,126 personnel have been deployed on polling duty.

“A total of 180 companies of security personnel deployed in Phase I and minimum one constable has been deployed in every polling station,” an official said, adding that there are a total of 201 all women polling stations and 225 model polling stations.

“The number of micro Observers for Phase I is 614 while 151 Flying Squad Teams are in place. There are also 137 Static Surveillance Team and 118 Video Surveillance Team,” the official said.

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