Bhubaneswar: Congress workers entered into a scuffle with police while trying to gherao the office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in Bhubaneswar on Thursday.
A large number of Congress workers and leaders from different parts of Odisha staged a demonstration and tried to gherao the ED office as part of the nationwide protest on the Hindenburg Research’s latest allegations.
Senior leaders, including AICC’s Odisha in-charge Ajoy Kumar and Mohammed Moquim, joined the protest alleging that Hindenburg Research had, on August 10, accused SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and her husband Dhaval Buch of having stakes in obscure offshore funds used in the alleged Adani money siphoning scandal.
Sources said a scuffle broke out when the demonstrators marched towards the ED office in a bid to gherao the building. As they tried to break the barricade, the police personnel deployed at the site stopped them and a scuffle erupted.
Police-Congress workers allegedly pushed each other. When the congress workers tried to break the barricade, the police stopped them which led to a major faceoff.
The Congress also alleged that the BJP-led Central government is misusing probe agencies like ED, CBI and NIA for political purpose.
Congress and other INDIA bloc parties are demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the claims made by the Hindenberg Research.
Reacting sharply to the Congress protest, BJP described the demonstration as a political stunt and accused the opposition of being a part of a conspiracy to create financial instability and chaos in the country.
BJP state spokesperson Manoj Mohapatra told reporters that the political programmes of Congress are aimed at suppressing corruption by its leaders and not in people’s interest.
Congress is making a desperate attempt to save its identity in Odisha by creating chaos, he claimed.
