Bengaluru:  The contractor-official-politician nexus and their dealings caught the attention of Income Tax (I-T) officials who led yesterday’s simultaneous and coordinated raids. Certain tenders awarded in Mandya, Hassan and Ramanagaram in the last few months and technical approvals given to projects in the Irrigation and Public Works Departments are said to have come under the  I-T scanner.

Highly placed sources said that it was not an operation conducted in a jiffy but a meticulous raid that was planned months ahead when the Government tenders were approved and money sanctioned. Crores of rupees were sanctioned to those projects that were still in nascent stage and work tenders were floated. The hurried manner in which money was sanctioned by officers to contractors raised suspicion in the I-T Department that later planned the raid, sources said.

During the 2018 Assembly elections, a modus operandi of making payments to Government contractors and then taking a cut in cash from them had been uncovered. The cash was then used to buy votes. The same pattern has been followed ahead of Lok Sabha elections too, sources said. The raids were conducted to cut the money supply chain.

Sources said that the I-T Department has been closely watching the publication of Government tenders in media since the last one year and there is a separate wing in the Department that scans such tenders and inspects the place where the works have been initiated.

The sleuths discovered that though many works were still under process, full money was sanctioned to the contractors by Government engineers and Department heads, raising suspicion, sources said.