New Delhi:
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out raids on Friday at 5 places linked to DMK chief and Member of Parliament Kathir Anand.
Kathir Anand is the son of S Duraimurugan, a senior DMK chief and the second-in-command within the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin cupboard, represents the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency.
The ED had carried out searches on the premises of DMK chief and Tamil Nadu Forest Minister Okay Ponmudy and his son Gautham Sigamani in a cash laundering case in July 2023. These actions towards its get together’s leaders have prompted the DMK guilty political vendetta.
In 2019, then-President Ram Nath Kovind had acted on a advice from the Election Fee of India to rescind the Lok Sabha election in Vellore because of the seizure of Rs 11 crore unaccounted money from Kathir Anand and places linked to him. Two days earlier than the April 18, 2019 election, the polls in Vellore have been cancelled.
A reelection was held in August 2019, the place Kathir Anand received on a DMK ticket by a slender margin of 8,141 votes. He defeated AIADMK’s AC Shanmugham. He once more defeated the latter, who had by then joined the BJP, within the 2024 Lok Sabha election. He secured a cushty victory with a margin of two,15,702 votes.
In November final yr, Mr Stalin accused “new events” of eager to “remove” the DMK amid a disagreement with actor-politician Vijay, after the latter focused to the DMK on a number of points. Mr Stalin performed down the import of such threats, declaring, “I can solely say, ‘lengthy reside those that chide us’.”