When it comes to tax raids on perfume and essence merchants, Akhilesh Yadav has shown he can follow a scent.

Income-tax officials finally raided the home and factory of Pushpraj “Pampi” Jain in Kannauj on Friday morning — just as the Samajwadi Party president had predicted they would.

Pampi is a Samajwadi member of the legislative council and perfume manufacturer, and had recently launched the “Samajwadi Itra” brand.

Last week, a team of officials from the income-tax department and the directorate of GST in Ahmedabad had raided the home and warehouses of Piyush Jain, a supplier of essence for pan masala in Kanpur and Kannauj.

Akhilesh had then claimed that Piyush was a BJP financier and that the raid was a mistake — the officials had mixed up Piyush and Pushpraj.

On Friday, a second team of tax officials raided the home of Mohammad Ayub alias Malik Miyan, another perfume maker in Kannauj, who is considered close to Akhilesh.

Akhilesh is in Kannauj as part of a Rath Yatra, campaigning for the polls, due by March.

The raids on Pampi and Ayub were continuing late in the evening. A directorate of GST team was also searching the home of Haji Naseem, a pan masala manufacturer in Ambedkar Nagar who is considered close to some Samajwadi leaders.

Reacting to the latest raids, the Samajwadi official Twitter handle said: “After the huge failure last time (raids on Piyush), IT, the trusted associate of the BJP, has finally conducted raids on SP MLC Pushpraj Jain and other perfume traders.”

Samajwadi general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav said: “The income-tax and GST teams are on election duty to help the BJP…. We are going to defeat the BJP the way Mamata Banerjee did in Bengal.”

Tax officials claim to have seized Rs 180 crore in cash as well as 25kg of gold and 250kg of silver from Piyush, who was arrested on money-laundering and tax evasion charges and sent to jail custody.

Milking the raids, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said at a rally in Kanpur on Tuesday: “Recently, currency notes stacked in boxes were recovered here. Maybe they will later attack us for it…. However, those who had spread the perfume of corruption across the state have kept their mouth shut.... The people of Uttar Pradesh are watching everything.”

Chief election commissioner Sushil Chandra said in Lucknow on Thursday that the income-tax department had been asked to keep a watch on the flow of black money in the run-up to the Assembly elections.