The Congress has used every trick of the trade to ensure that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is not passed during this parliament session too. The Congress Vice President, Rahul Gandhi speaks without a sense of history. He randomly picks up issues related to the Modi Government and makes rhetorical comments that fail to ignite the minds of the average citizen. If this is Rahul Gandhi’s roadmap for reclaiming the Congress Party’s lost space then it certainly is a lost cause. This time Parliament is stalled because of the National Herald case where Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her Deputy, Rahul Gandhi have been asked to appear before the Delhi High Court. On December 7, 2015, the Delhi High Court dismissed the appeals of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and five others which included Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda and ordered them to appear in person before the trial court on December 9.
The Delhi High Court in its 7 December judgment says, “After having considered the entire case in its proper perspective, this Court finds no hesitation to put it on record that the modus operandi adopted by petitioners in taking control of AJL via Special Purpose Vehicle, i.e., Y.I., particularly, when the main persons in Congress Party, AJL and Y.I. are the same, evidences a criminal intent. Whether it is cheating, criminal misappropriation or criminal breach of trust is not required to be spelt out at this nascent stage. In any case, by no stretch of imagination, it can be said that no case for summoning petitioners as accused in the complaint in question is made out. Questionable conduct of petitioners needs to be properly examined at the charge stage to find out the truth and so these criminal proceedings cannot be thwarted at this initial stage.”
The National Herald was a newspaper set up by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938 and closed down in 2008 due to financial crisis. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first editor of the newspaper and until his appointment as Prime Minister was Chairman of Herald’s Board of Directors. At the time of closing, the newspaper was in debt to the tune of Rs 90 crore.
After closing down of National Herald, Associated Journals Limited(AJL), a public limited company, which published the National Herald became a real estate firm with buildings in New Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai and Bhopal. In November 2010, AJL with both its assets and liabilities was taken over by a newly floated company called Young India Limited. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi both have shares of 38% in Young India Limited (YIL) and the remaining shares held by Congressmen Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Sam Pitroda and Suman Dubey. Congress party gave Young India Limited an interest free loan of Rs 90.25 crore for YIL to acquire AJL and wrote off the loan given to AJL as unrecoverable in subsequent years.
It is evident that a legal matter has been used by the Congress Party to derail Parliament and by extension mocking the court of the people of this country. The GST has been hanging fire and is affecting trade and commerce. At this rate the Congress Party will have to be held responsible for causing a national loss. The people of this country need to take to task their representatives who enter parliament to serve only the cause of party politics.