Ranchi, Nov 9 (IANS): The Income Tax department conducted raids at the residence of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren's Personal Secretary Sunil Srivastava and others on Saturday.

According to sources in the know, the raids were being conducted to check the illegal cash flow in the run-up to the state Assembly elections in the state.

The I-T teams conducted simultaneous raids at Sunil Srivastava's residence in Ashok Nagar, the houses of his family members and other commercial and industrial establishments in Jamshedpur.

Details of the raids by the I-T department were awaited.

Sunil Srivastava had been serving as the Personal Secretary of CM Soren for a long time.

Earlier, Sunil Srivastava served as an engineer in a government department and later, he left that job and began working as an assistant of CM Soren.

Sunil Srivastava was also a member of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha's central committee and a star campaigner.

On October 26, the I-T Department conducted raids in Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Giridih and Kolkata at 35 commercial and industrial establishments for two days in connection with illegal cash flow.

During the raids, documents related to benami assets and investments worth Rs 150 crore were seized from the premises of these establishments.

After matching the amount of money seized from the traders with their books of account, Rs 70 lakh was seized and deposited in the bank.

Assembly elections will be held in Jharkhand in two phases on November 13 and 20 while votes will be counted on November 23.