The Congress is gearing up to hold a political show of strength on Monday when the party leader Rahul Gandhi will appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case.
While Rahul will appear before the ED on Monday, party president Sonia Gandhi is expected to miss her date with the probe agency due to her hospitalisation for Covid-19 complications.
Senior party leaders Digvijay Singh, Sachin Pilot, and Sanjay Nirupam addressed Press conferences simultaneously in different locations on Sunday to criticise what they dubbed “ political vendetta” unleashed by the Modi Government.
Accusing the BJP of indulging in vendetta politics, Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh said Rahul will appear before ED on Monday morning in connection with an alleged money laundering case.
“Rahul will go to the ED office on Monday morning from the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters.
Congress MPs and working committee members will be present at the party office at 9.30 am on Monday,” Singh said briefing the media at AICC headquarters in the national Capital. When asked if the Congress MPs and working committee members would take out march to the ED office along with Gandhi, he said no decision has been taken on that yet.
“The AICC will discuss with the local administration, after which it will be decided if some leaders will go with him (Gandhi) or not,” Singh said. “The ED had closed the case in 2015 after finding that there was no truth in it. No FIR has been registered so far in this case.
There is no proof…This is an effort to put political pressure on Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. This is politics of pressurising. It has become the habit of the present regime to frame false cases for political vendetta,” Singh said.
The Rajya Sabha member said that the Gandhi family never bowed before the British.
“Will the family whose two members attained martyrdom for the country be afraid of such summons and fake cases? “They won’t be afraid. This case will be faced and fought strongly,” he said. Sonia Gandhi was also asked to appear before the ED in this case. However, she tested positive for COVID-19 on June 2 and was recuperating.
She was to appear before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on June 8 and had sought more time from the probe agency, which has now issued a fresh summons for her to appear on June 23. The case pertains to the probe into the alleged financial irregularities in the party-promoted Young Indian that owns the National Herald newspaper.
The paper is published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and owned by Young Indian Pvt Limited. Officials said the agency wants to record the statements of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The party also held press conferences fielding prominent faces in Lucknow (Sachin Pilot), Raipur (Vivek Thanka), Shimla (Sanjay Nirupam), Ranjeet Ranjan (Chandigarh), Pawan Khera (Ahmedabad) and Alka Lamba (Dehradun), targeting the Modi dispensation. In Lucknow, Pilot said the central agencies were misused. “ED, CBI will do only that what will benefit the Centre,” Pilot while addressing a press conference in Lucknow on the issue.
Khera said in Ahmedabad, "there is not an iota of illegal activity. Despite this, Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi were served notices by the ED out of political vendetta, with the aim to gain some headlines for a week. We should learn from PM Narendra Modi how to manage headlines.
Our leaders will honour the ED notice and will go to its office with pride and fearlessness because they have not done anything wrong." Khera alleged that the BJP was spending large amounts of money to malign Rahul's image. "Rahul Gandhi will not get cowed down," he said.
In Chandigarh, newly-elected Rajya Sabha MP Ranjeet Ranjan claimed that the BJP was trying to silence the Opposition.