Swooping down on officials considered close to DMK chief M. Karunanidhi, vigilance officials today raided the premises of former state Intelligence chief M.S. Jaffer Sait and several others in connection with an alleged land allotment scam.
FIRs have been filed against kin of officials who are under the scanner of Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption, DVAC sources said.
Facing action in the alleged Tamil Nadu Housing Board (TNHB) land allotment scam are spouses and children of various persons named in the FIR by the DVAC.
The raids have come amidst the Jayalalithaa government's crackdown on land grabbing cases across the state in which several key local DMK functionaries have been arrested.
DMK has charged the government with targeting its partymen by 'foisting false cases'.
The sources said FIRs had been filed against family members of the officials whose premises had been raided, as the land/plots allotted to them by TNHB under the government's discretionary quota had been registered in their name.
FIRs had been filed against Durga Shankar, son of IAS officer Rajamanickam and Parveen Jaffar, wife of Jaffer Sait, Jeyasudha, wife of Kamaraj, a Personal Security Officer to Karunanidhi when he was Chief Minister and Meena, wife of Pandian, another PSO then, for misuse of housing board land.
FIRs were also filed against Karunanidhi's PSOs C Vinothan and C Ganesan as the land had been allotted in their names, they said.
The issue first broke out in December last year, with allegations of misuse of discretionary quota, but in a suo motu statement in the Assembly in February this year, Karunanidhi had denied any wrongdoing.
First introduced in 1979 by the AIADMK government, the discretionary quota was withdrawn by the DMK regime earlier this year.