The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday searched premises linked to former Rajasthan minister Mahesh Joshi and some others in a money laundering probe linked to alleged irregularities in the Jal Jeevan Mission, official sources said. Last year, the federal agency had conducted at least two rounds of raids in the case related to the central government programme.
The locations linked to Joshi, a former minister of the public health engineering (PHE) department, are being searched under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the sources said. Joshi was denied a ticket by the Congress to contest from the Hawa Mahal seat in Jaipur in the recently held assembly polls in the state.
The agency had earlier claimed that several middlemen and property dealers “aided” officials of the Rajasthan government’s PHE department to siphon off “illegally earned” money from the Jal Jeevan Mission.
Probe found that contractors were involved in securing tenders pertaining to Jal Jeevan Mission works, based on purported “fake” work completion certificates issued by the Indian Railway Construction International Limited (IRCON) and by “bribing” senior PHE department officials, it had alleged.
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