The trial court on Monday fixed April 8 for a reluctant Congress to produce its annual account books during the scam period of 2010-2011 in the National Herald case.
The court also asked the Associated Journal ltd (AJl), publisher of National Herald, to produce its accounts for the said period.
Metropolitan Magistrate lovleen’s strict direction came after the battery of lawyers appearing for the Congress informed the court that the party needed time to follow the March 11 order for producing the accounts. Senior lawyers RS Cheema, Ramesh Gupta and Badar Mahmood argued saying, “Summons were not clear as to whether it was for 2010, 2011 or for both.”
The Congress was supposed to produce the documents on Monday. At one point, the lawyers even said they received the summons only on Saturday and that too, it was a peon in the AICC office who had received it.
There was no senior leader at that point to consult, the lawyers said even as they presented the peon in court to justify their claim.
Hearing this argument, petitioner Subramanian Swamy quipped that the AICC office was like a “haunted house” and these were all clever arguments to delay the process. He urged the magistrate to give stern directions. The Congress lawyers sought to adjourn the case to May, which Swamy vehemently objected.
The lawyers also contended that Swamy had already produced AJl’s balance sheets and there was no need to produce the same again. lawyers even showed printouts of some Tweets of Swamy about the National Herald case to the magistrate.
“We are taken for a ride. The documents summoned are already on the record of the court. It’s only for the purpose of publicity that the complainant has filed this complaint as he has been ‘tweeting’ about this case from his social networking account Twitter,” said advocate RS Cheema.
Swamy countered that the magistrate has asked for the account books of AJl during the scam period and not the balance sheets available in public domain. He said that Registrar of Company officials were summoned earlier just to verify who the directors in AJl were during the relevant period and not for the purpose of verifying the balance sheets.
Meanwhile, the Income Tax department submitted documents in sealed cover. The other five Government departments like the ED and Urban Development Ministry have already submitted the documents last week.
Motilal Vora, the AICC treasurer and an accused in the case, has already challenged the magistrate’s order summoning Government documents from six departments, with the next hearing in the case scheduled on April 4 in the Delhi High Court. Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi have also filed petition in this regard before the magistrate for seeking a revision of the order.
In earlier hearing, the magistrate decided to put the Government documents in the sealed cover considering the case being heard in the High Court. Swamy on Monday argued that as there was no stay from the High Court, the sealed cover may be opened, which was objected to by the Congress lawyers.