Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter K Kavitha, who entered politics in “nepotism quota”, and became a champion of women’s reservation bill in the regime of Bharat Rashtra Samithi, a party that did not have a single woman in his cabinet from 2014-2018. This is to divert attention from Delhi liquor scam, concluded BJP MP Arvind Dharmapuri.
“Aap chronology samjhiye”, he said, explaining Telangana government’s act and the link with Delhi liquor scam. “KCR govt. didn’t have a single woman in his cabinet from 2014-2018, for obvious reasons of Ms Kavitha’s hegemony in the party, who was an MP from Nizamabad then. After losing to @BJP4India candidate in 2019 General Elections, subsequently becoming MLC in Nepotism quota & now evolving as a key conspirator in #DelhiLiquorScam, her sudden epiphany to fight for Women’s Reservation bill is just her futile attempt to divert people’s attention,” Dharmapuri tweeted.
The Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker further said that Telangana never bowed down to anyone in the first or the recent Telangana movement, but is now “bowing in shame before the nation” in the wake of Kavitha’s involvement in Delhi liquorgate.
Kavitha’s Sudden Involvement in Politics
According to reports, Kavitha’s involvement in activities of the BRS increased recently. She was seen accompanying KCR on tours to meet leaders of other states. The trips came at a time when she was being questioned in the liquor scam and had been named in the ED chargesheet.
A report in The Print stated that she accompanied KCR in at least five of his meetings with leaders outside Telangana. Last month she was present at Maharashtra’s Nanded where KCR held his first public meeting outside home ground ever since the party was renamed the BRS.
The report further stated that KCR’s son and state IT minister KT Rama Rao has mostly stayed away from these meetings, including the one at Nanded.
Kavitha was also present when KCR met Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Singh Tikait in Delhi in March last year, and also when he met Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav. She also accompanied her father to Mumbai where he met former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar.
She was with KCR in his meetings with Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, and also when Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann visited Telangana in January this year to attend BRS’ public meeting in Khammam where the leaders gave a call for a ‘new resistance’ against BJP.
Separately, she met Tamil Nadu’s actor-turned-politician Sharath Kumar at her residence in Hyderabad, where the latter reportedly expressed an interest in supporting the BRS.
Fresh Trouble for Kavitha
The Enforcement Directorate has summoned Telangana CM’s daughter in connection with a money laundering case linked to alleged irregularities in the Delhi excise policy, officials said on Wednesday.
Kavitha Kalvakuntla, 44, a Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party MLC, has been asked to depose on March 9 before the federal agency in the national capital.
She has been called so that she can be confronted with Hyderabad-based businessman Arun Ramchandran Pillai, an alleged frontman of the “south group”, who was arrested by the ED on Monday.
The agency will record Kavitha’s statement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) during this confrontation.
Pillai is in ED custody and the agency had earlier said he “represented the south group”, an alleged liquor cartel linked to Kavitha and others.
The BRS leader said she would fully cooperate with the investigation agency but would seek legal opinion on the date of deposition in view of her proposed dharna in Delhi on March 10 in support of the women’s reservation bill.
Kavitha said that “these tactics of intimidation” against the fight of her father and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, and the BRS would not deter them.
The ED has Pillai’s custody till March 12 (to be again produced before a Delhi court on March 13) and if Kavitha chooses to skip the date on Thursday, the agency may give her a fresh date within the custody period of Pillai.
The ED had said the “south group” that “comprises” Sarath Reddy (promoter of Aurobindo Pharma), Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy (YSR Congress MP from Ongole Lok Sabha seat), Kavitha and others.
The ED also alleged in Pillai’s remand papers that he “represented the benami investments” of Kavitha in this case. The BRS leader has been questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in this case earlier.
It is alleged that the Delhi government’s excise policy for 2021-22 to grant licences to liquor traders allowed cartelisation and favoured certain dealers, who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in New Delhi.
The policy was later scrapped and the Delhi Lt Governor had recommended a CBI probe following which the ED registered a case under the PMLA.
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