How Congress damns itself in National Herald land-grab case

Yesterday’s bluster has already given way to today’s retreat. Barely hours after Subramanian Swamy went public with his allegations of financial impropriety and other assorted malpractices in the National Herald case, directly implicating Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, the Congress appeared momentarily to rise to his challenge. A letter purporting to be from “Rahul Gandhi’s office”, issued on Thursday night, said he reserved the right to take legal action against Swamy for his “baseless” allegations. But barely 24 hours later, the Congress is already dialling back its rhetorical bravado. Rahul Gandhi doesn’t actually have to file a defamation case against Swamy; his mere threat to file a case counts as adequate response, says Manish Tewari, recently inducted into the Manmohan Singh ministry as reward for his past exertions as indefatigable party spokesperson. Other assorted Congress underlings have rustled up yet more inventive excuses for the party’s reluctance to pick up the gauntlet thrown by Swamy. If anything, it is for Swamy to go to court to establish the verity of his allegations, they say,  oblivious to the fact that Swamy has promised to do precisely that - after observing the due process of exhausting all other options, as the courts would want him to do. But in this case, silence may not prove golden for the Congress party. Its leaden-footed response whenever direct allegations are made against the First Family that presides over its destiny is creating a vacuum in the political space that gets filled, at least in the popular perception, with doubts and suspicions that the party has much to hide. [caption id=“attachment_511721” align=“alignright” width=“380”]  Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have much to answer for. PTI[/caption] Late on Friday, the Congress came out of its shell sufficiently long to address one of Swamy’s allegations: that the Congress had violated election laws governing the conduct of political parties by extending a loan of Rs 90 crore to Associated Journals, the company floated during the freedom struggle by Congress leaders (using public donations) to advance the cause of independence through the channel of National Herald and other newspapers. Congress General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi claimed in a press release that the Congress had “done its duty” in supporting  Associated Journals  to “help initiate a process to bring the (National Herald) newspaper back to health in compliance with the law of the land.” This support, the release noted, “was extended by the Indian National Congress in the form of interest-free loans from which no commercial profit has accrued to INC.” The Congress further sought to paint itself in glory for having extended the loan to Associated Journals. “It is a matter of pride for the Indian National Congress that it has supported  Associated Journals, publisher of the National Herald and other newspapers,” Dwivedi’s press release said. The Congress, he added, had “done its duty” in supporting  Associated Journals to “help initiate a process to bring the newspaper back to health in compliance with the laws of the land.” Noble sentiments, doubtless, except that they are at variance with Rahul Gandhi’s own articulation (as channelled by his voice-throwing office) that the party had no plans whatsoever of relaunching National Herald or any other newspaper.  The Pioneer reported earlier in October ( here) that Rahul Gandhi’s office had clarified in an e-mail message that Young Indian, the Section 25 company that was floated with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi as majority shareholders (and is at the centre of Swamy’s allegations),  had no intention to relaunch any newspaper. The e-mail from Rahul Gandhi’s office reportedly observed: “Young Indian is a company registered and holding a licence granted under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956. As a Section 25 company, Young Indian, is a not-for-profit company and does not have commercial operations. The activities of the company are in the public domain. Anyone who chooses to can inspect the Objects of the Company. The company has no intention of starting any newspaper.” There is another inherent problem with the transactions that effectively ensured that prime real-estate offered to Associated Journals passed over to a private company in which Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were majority shareholders. If Associated Journals, which was started with public donations, had become defunct, the land that it had secured (for the purposes of publishing newspapers) ought to have been returned. But Young Indian secured them for just Rs 50 lakh, and if what Swamy claimed at his press conference is true, is using the land to generate revenue by renting out the premises. It is too much to expect the Congress, which has already done one somersault, to launch an investigation into allegations of malpractices that lead to Sonia Gandhi’s doors. Such whimsical exercise of executive power is typically directed against Opposition leaders. However, there is a compelling case for the Election Commission, a Constitutional body, to investigate whether the Rs 90 crore loan that Congress has admitted it lent to Associated Journals violated any section of the Representation of the People Act. In addition, the Election Commission ought to investigate whether Rahul Gandhi’s alleged failure to disclose details his shareholdings in Young Indian, while filing his election affidavit in 2009, was in breach of election laws. The Congress is manifestly looking to brazen it out in the face of these allegations of wrongdoing that lead up to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. But it has also sufficiently damned itself , which leaves open a window of opportunity for constitutional entities to at least initiate a preliminary enquiry into the allegations. If none of these happen, of course, there is always the final date in court that Swamy has promised the Congress. The last word on this sordid episode hasn’t yet been said.