Amid Summons To Hemant Soren, Jharkhand's Big Order On Central Agencies
NDTV
The directives come at a time when Chief Minister Hemant Soren and several other officials have been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate.
Escalating the face-off with the Centre at a time when Chief Minister Hemant Soren has skipped seven summons by the Enforcement Directorate, the Jharkhand government has issued instructions to all departments to not answer any queries by central agencies or hand over any documents to them directly. The departments have been asked to report all queries to the Cabinet Secretariat or the Vigilance Department for processing.
While the Jharkhand government has said that it is streamlining the process to ensure incomplete information is not handed over, experts are seeing the move as a form of non-cooperation with central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate, CBI and the Income Tax department.
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, which runs a coalition government in the state with the Congress as the other major partner, is a member of the INDIA alliance at the Centre. Several members of the bloc, including West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee - in whose state an Enforcement Directorate team was attacked on January 5 - have been lashing out at the BJP government at the Centre for allegedly misusing central agencies in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election.
