National Herald case: How summons to Rahul, Sonia weakens Cong more

Metropolitan magistrate Gomati Manocha’s summons to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi — for them to be present in court on 7 August to defend themselves against charges of “cheating” and “misappropriation of property” in dubious takeover of the National Herald group — has been shocking to the Congress. It has come at a time when a humiliating defeat in the parliamentary elections indicated that Congress’s first family was no longer revered by the people and its supposed charisma had completely diminished. Incidentally,  they have to defend a land grab case since another member of the family, Robert Vadra, has been accused for his lust for land. [caption id=“attachment_1590525” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. PTI[/caption] In the National Herald case too, petitioner Subramanian Swamy has accused Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, and also some other confidantes of the Nehru-Gandhi family of taking over the company through fraudulent means to make a real estate acquisition worth over Rs 2000 crore. The publishing company for National Herald, Associated Journal, has huge assets in New Delhi, Lucknow, Panchkula, Indore and Mumbai. The magistrate’s observations while issuing summons after examining Swamy’s petition for about a year is significant. “Complainant has established a prima facie case against the accused under section 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property, 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read with section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC… Hence, let the accused Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Moti Lal Vohra, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda be summoned for August 7, 2014. Let the Young Indian be summoned through it’s authorised representative for the same date,” said the magistrate. Enthused by the magistrate’s order, Swamy has now written to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley seeking an investigation into the National Herald case under the Income Tax Act. There has been no official response from the Finance minister’s office. But BJP sources said, that the Finance Ministry will examine all angles as listed in Swamy’s letter. The matter could also be referred to company affairs to look into the technical-legal aspects of the said take over by Young Indian incorporated in November 2010, in which Rahul and Sonia together own 76 percent shares. The BJP is elated over the developments. But since the party is in power, it does not want to be seen as overtly enthusiastic about the court’s summons to Sonia, Rahul and their other trusted leaders. It is thus not making any further noises than Swamy, now in their own party ranks, is making. A party leader said the possibility of other agencies putting their act together to find the truth should be the natural follow up. The Modi government can’t be accused be of vendetta, since the court has prima facie accepted wrong doing on the part of Sonia and Rahul. The charges listed against them indeed are very serious. Swamy has pointed that Rahul Gandhi’s office had responded to The Pioneer in an email to a query whether Young Indian was expected to re-launch a defunct National Herald. That e-mail from Rahul Gandhi’s office read, “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.” The Congress vice-president’s  explicit response that he had no intentions to run the newspaper inadvertently has given credence to the charges of land grab at some of the most prime locations in the country. Though its incumbent upon the Modi government to ensure smooth functioning of Parliament during the Budget Session, the National Herald case will surely cast its shadow and the BJP will use the ready ammunition to further corner an already demoralised Congress. Swamy has further said that he will ask urge the court to ask Sonia and Rahul to deposit their passports to the courts, so that they don’t go abroad without permission of the court during pendency of the case. From the Congress’ perspective two important decisions are to be taken by the government and the Speaker when the Parliament opens budget session — election of Deputy Speaker, which has conventionally been decided by the main opposition party, and taking a call on Congress’s claim for designating its leader as the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The Congress does not have 1/10 members of the total strength of Lok Sabha to automatically become a deserving claimant and it is now left to the Speaker to decide on the issue. Meanwhile, the Congress simply did not know how to react over the court summon. Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi’s statement was more of a political rebuttal than response of substance. “Dr Swamy is known for his personal, motivated campaign against the Congress and you can take it that as and when we receive the papers and take the full legal advice, a very vigorous response will be filed in respect of this completely false and motivated complaint. Issuance of process over a stale complaint made a year ago is not something to be excited about. Let’s seek comprehensive legal advice and you will see how all allegations are legally demolished.” But matters for the Congress has been further complicated by the wordings of the court order: “from the complaint and the evidence led so far, it appears that Young Indian was in fact created as a sham or a cloak to convert public money to personal use or as a special purpose vehicle for acquiring control over Rs 2000 crores worth of assets of The Associated Journals Ltd.(AJL)… Since all the accused persons have allegedly acted in consortium with each other to achieve the said nefarious design, there are sufficient grounds for proceeding against all of them.” Ahead of assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, the BJP has got some ready made talking points to fire against the Congress.