NEW DELHI: The income tax investigation unit in Delhi has summoned senior Congress member and party treasurer Ahmed Patel for questioning in person early next month in connection with transactions related to the party after the department refused to accept the response he sent through authorised representatives.

The Congress veteran had been summoned last month but expressed inability to appear in person due to health issues.

Patel’s questioning, according to I-T officials, was necessitated after the investigation wing of the department found details of alleged unaccounted cash transfers made to Congress before the 2019 parliamentary polls.

However, news agency PTI quoted Patel as saying that Congress’s accounts were transparent and clear. “They have called me and I will definitely go, but I do not know the reason why they have called me,” he told PTI, seeking to know why the I-T department had not looked at the “record-breaking donations of BJP”.

Details of the transactions under scanner first surfaced during search operations across 50 locations in Delhi, Indore, Bhopal and Goa in April last year. The premises searched included those belonging to close aides of Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath .

“A part of the cash was transferred to the headquarters of a major political party in Delhi, including about Rs 20 crore moved through hawala from the residence of a senior functionary at Tughlaq Road , New Delhi (to the party headquarters),” the CBDT had then said.

Patel had attracted headlines in April last year, before the Lok Sabha polls, when he reached the residence of a Congress functionary during a search operation at the latter’s premises in east Delhi.

