BJP accuses CM of meeting absconding industrialist

Bengaluru: While candidates are busy scrambling the support of the people for the Assembly elections, a fresh allegation has come under the way of the Congress from the BJP that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had met an absconding industrialist in China in 2013. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said in a press conference in Delhi that Karnataka’s Department of Information and Public Relations had claimed in a report that the CM had led a delegation the World Economic Forum Summit in Dalian, where he had invited the industrialist Vijay Eswaran to invest in Karnataka.

In Patra’s words, Vijay Eswaran was accused of defrauding investors in a multi-level marketing scheme and had been declared an absconder since 2009. He produced a photograph of the CM with Mr. Eswaran, where the CM is shown holding a gift packet. He referred to the 2016 luxury watch controversy and informed that the businessman’s company was involved  in luxury watches.

Mr. Patra said that Mr. Eswaran’s firm, QI, had defrauded thousands of investors in Karnataka and claimed that there had been protests from the investors, to which the police and the government had turned a blind eye.

While Chief Minister Siddaramaiah replied that it was a false allegation, sources in the government say that the CM may have met the industrialist in China, but only as an indication of courtesy and not of collaboration. They also vouched that Mr. Eswaran was not a part of the Invest Karnataka meet held in 2016.

A senior CID official contradicted the allegations and informed that 22 FIRs had been lodged against the representatives of QNET in Bengaluru in 2017 and that they were being investigated under the Economic Offences Wing and Criminal Investigation Division.

Congress spokesperson VS Ugrappa retorted by pointing out to the fraudulent multi-crore scam of Nirav Modi, who had been a part of the Indian business delegation led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to the World Economic Forum Summit in Davos in January 2018. He reminded that there were photos of the two people together and when Nirav Modi fled the country, the BJP claimed that the photo did not mean anything. He said that the BJP was trying to create an issue in the State by making false accusations against the Chief Minister.