Digvijay records statement with EOW in fraud case

Congress leader Digvijay Singh today recorded his statement with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) here in connection with an alleged fraud case in a matter that dates back his chief ministership in Madhya Pradesh.
Singh and two others, including a former minister, are facing criminal charges like cheating and forgery.
"Digvijayji went to the EOW office with me at 11.30 am and got his statement recorded. We left the EOW office at around 2.30 pm," his lawyer Ajay Gupta told PTI.
"Digvijayji is being hounded by the BJP government in the state for raising the Vyapam scam. My client is facing false accusations. It's purely a case of witch-hunting," he said.

Last year, Singh and two others, including one of his former Cabinet colleagues, were charged by EOW with fraud and showing undue favour to a private college.
In the case, the AICC General Secretary, who was chief minister of the state from 1993 to 2003, along with his Technical Education Minister, Raja Pateria, have been accused of unlawfully reducing a penalty on RKDF College from Rs 24 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh.

Besides the two, RKDF Chairman Sunil Kapoor has also been booked.
According to a complaint by Radhavallabh Sharda, a local journalist, Singh and Pateria waived the penalty imposed on the institute by the Education Department over some "wrongful" admissions in 2000-01 and 2001-02.

The complainant had stated the college had requested Singh to reduce the penalty to Rs 5 lakh which was slashed to Rs 2.5 lakh.
Siddaramaiah said during the recent all party meeting, it
was decided to allow the legal team to take a decision depending on thedevelopments in the court.
"Nariman has kept two things in mind. The first is to succeed in the main petition which is coming up in the Supreme Court on October 18 where we are challenging the final award of the Cauvery Tribunal.
"Second is when similar situation had arisen in 2012, as a goodwill gesture we had offered release 10,000cusecs for nine days, which was accepted by the court then," he said.

The Chief Minister said government had already decided to approach theSupreme Court with a modification petition explaining itsdifficulties in implementing its order and seeking its changeand also to move the Cauvery Supervisory Committee.
Pointing out that this is not the first time that the state is complying with such orders of the Supreme Court, he recalled similar action was taken when Deve Gowda, S M Krishna and Jagadish Shettar were chief ministers.
Siddaramaiah said "this time also we had no other option and it was inevitable for us to release water and comply with the order."
Assuring farmer's protection for their standing crops and people of Bengaluru, Mandya and Mysuru on drinking water, Siddaramaiah said "we are already releasing water to crops through canals as per what has been decided in the Irrigation Consultative Committee."

He said BJP and JD(S) were trying to play politics supporting Karnataka state bandh called by pro-Kannada organisations tomorrow.