Sonia Gandhi Quizzed By ED For 2 Hours. 75 Cong MPs Detained As Party Holds Nation-Wide Protests | Key Points

The Congress party staged demonstrations across the country with prominent leaders and party workers facing detentions in cities like Delhi, Nagpur and Mumbai.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi captured as she arrived to appear before the Enforcement Directorate | Police use water cannons to disperse Congress workers and leaders protesting in Chandigarh.

Source : PTI | ANI

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday questioned Congress president Sonia Gandhi in connection with the National Herald case. She was accompanied by her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as they reached the ED office in the national capital together. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also arrived at the ED office earlier in the day.

The questioning for the day has concluded and the central probe agency may ask Sonia Gandhi to appear before it on Monday again, as per inputs.

The Congress party staged demonstrations across the country with prominent leaders and party workers facing detentions in cities like Delhi, Nagpur, and Mumbai.

Key Points To Know:

• As many as 75 Members of Parliament from the Congress party including Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and several workers were detained by the Delhi Police on Thursday for holding protests against the questioning of the party's interim president Sonia Gandhi by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald case.
  
  Senior Congress leaders including P Chidambaram, Ajay Maken, Manickam Tagore, KC Venugopal, Adhir Ranjan Chaudhry, Shashi Tharoor, Sachin Pilot, Harish Rawat, Ashok Gehlot, K Suresh, and others were those detained. As per news agency ANI, around 75 Congress MPs were taken by Delhi Police in buses when they left Parliament to reach Congress headquarters.
  
  
• Water cannons were used at Congress workers protesting in Delhi and Chandigarh. Visuals of protests garnered wide attention while the agitation also led to traffic snarls in central Delhi, coupled with rain-induced waterlogging and Kanwar Yatra.
  

  #WATCH Delhi | Water cannons being used at Congress workers protesting over ED probe against party chief Sonia Gandhi in National Herald case pic.twitter.com/U4EyZDeZMr

  — ANI (@ANI) July 21, 2022

• Opposition leaders in the Parliament protested against Congress president Sonia Gandhi's appearance before Enforcement Directorate (ED) by sloganeering during the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha sessions on Thursday.
  
  
• Amid sloganeering by some Opposition leaders in the Parliament, Union minister Pralhad Joshi on Thursday slammed the uproar saying that the Congress thinks they are above the law. "Everybody is equal before the law or not? Is the Congress president (Sonia Gandhi) a superhuman being? They (Congress) think they are above the law...," Joshi said in Lok Sabha, as quoted by news agency ANI.
  
  Union Minister Anurag Thakur also criticised the Congress saying, "If Gandhi family is spotless, why is it anxious? If they have not indulged in corruption then why this ruckus. It's the duty of probe agencies to investigate people involved in corruption..."

  #WATCH Guwahati, Assam | A clash-like situation broke out between Police and Guwahati Congress workers who were detained in the wake of protest over ED probe against Sonia Gandhi pic.twitter.com/qF5S4X8kH2

  — ANI (@ANI) July 21, 2022

• In a joint statement, Opposition parties slammed the BJP-led Centre for unleashing a "relentless vendetta against political opponents" through misuse of central probe agencies by targeting prominent leaders of various parties.

  "The Modi Sarkar has unleashed a relentless campaign of vendetta against its political opponents and critics through the mischievous misuse of investigative agencies. Prominent leaders of a number of political parties have been deliberately targeted and subjected to harassment in an unprecedented manner," the statement reads, as quoted by ANI.

  "We condemn this and resolve to continue and intensify our collective fight against the anti-people, anti-farmer, anti-Constitution policies of the Modi Sarkar that is destroying the social fabric of our society," it added.

  The statement was released after floor leaders of all Opposition parties in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha met at the office of Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge in Parliament.
  
  

• Congress workers were detained in Nagpur and Mumbai while a clash-like situation broke out between Police and Guwahati Congress workers over their agitation, as per ANI. As part of the nationwide protests, Congress workers and NSUI held demonstrations in Bihar, Rajasthan, Jammu & Kashmir, and Tamil Nadu among other states.
  
  

• Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and Congress MP Mallikarjun Kharge accused the BJP of showing its highhandedness by misusing the probe agencies by asking them to target opposition leaders. "They (ruling party) want to show how powerful they are. We've raised the issue of inflation in Parliament but they're not ready for discussion. We are now raising the issue of misuse of central probe agencies," he said, as quoted by ANI.
  
  

• Congress leader Sachin Pilot who was detained for protesting alleged, "There is misuse of agencies in the country... it's our right to protest in a democracy, but it is also being crushed upon...." Rajasthan CM claimed that "it is happening for the first time in the country that they are stopping dharna demonstration..."

  As per Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole, "The way ED is treating Sonia Gandhi, they're trying to defame her. Govt is misusing central agencies against Congress."
  
  

• Earlier in the day, Congress MP and Whip in Lok Sabha Manickam Tagore gave an adjournment motion notice in the Parliament to discuss the misuse of the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

  Tagore sought that the House advise ED to abandon the behaviour of calling the public representatives of the opposition party, especially targeting the opposition leaders, and to direct the ED to investigate old scams of the BJP Government, ANI reported.

  AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh gave zero-hour notice over "misuse of central investigation agencies by the ruling government".
  
  

• As per sources, Sonia Gandhi will be quizzed in three phases and the inquiry will be led by ED Additional Director Monika Sharma.

National Herald Case

The ED sought to record Sonia Gandhi's statements under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in connection with a money laundering case involving the National Herald. Last month, the ED questioned Rahul Gandhi on several occasions in the case. The matter pertains to alleged financial irregularities in a case registered about nine months ago after a trial court took cognisance of an Income Tax Department probe carried out on the basis of a private criminal complaint filed by former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013. 

Swamy had approached the court alleging that the assets of Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which published the National Herald newspaper, were fraudulently acquired and transferred to Young Indian Pvt Limited (YIL), in which Sonia Gandhi and her son owned 38 per cent shares each. The YIL promoters include Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. 

According to ANI, Swamy had alleged that the Gandhis cheated and misappropriated funds, with YIL paying only Rs 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore that AJL owed to the Congress. Congress contended that YIL was a not-for-profit company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956 that can neither accumulate profits nor pay dividends to its shareholders. 

Dubbing it a case of political vendetta, senior Supreme Court advocate and Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi had said, "This is truly a very weird case -- an alleged money laundering case on which summons are issued with no money involved." 

The federal agency's move followed the questioning of senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and Congress Treasurer Pawan Bansal in April. The agency then recorded the statements of both the Congress leaders then under the PMLA. The National Herald is published by AJL and owned by YIL. While Kharge is the CEO of YIL, Bansal is the Managing Director of AJL. 

The ED is currently investigating the shareholding pattern and financial transactions along with the role of party functionaries in the functioning of AJL and YIL.

(With Agency Inputs)