Janjivan Bureau
New Delhi: NDA government is already facing the ‘note bandi’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi today faced a pincer movement, in which forces simultaneously attack both flanks of an enemy formation, from a united opposition. The Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and opposition parties questioned Modi’s personal integrity over whether he had received cash payments, in excess of Rs 50 crore, from individuals associated with the Sahara and Aditya Birla groups in 2012-13, when he was the chief minister of Gujarat.
If Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, at a public rally in Mehsana in the PM’s home state of Gujarat, demanded an independent inquiry into the allegations, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the first to raise the issue a couple of months back, said that the PM should quit until his name is cleared.
The Congress and Aam Aadmi Party chief Kejriwal asked of Modi to follow the example of his mentor LK Advani, who in 1996 had quit his Lok Sabha membership after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had charged him in the Jain diary hawala case.
Gandhi and Kejriwal found support from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who “demanded a thorough investigation into the Sahara diaries.” Communist Party of India (Marxist) chief Sitaram Yechury said that “Sahara diaries and allegations against Modi, when he was Gujarat CM, are very serious and must be investigated.”
The opposition’s allegations relate to documents, including an email, recovered in raids of Central Bureau of Investigation and Income Tax Department on Sahara and Birla group of companies in 2013 and 2014, documents which are now part of a court case in the Supreme Court filed by lawyer Prashant Bhushan. The next hearing of the case is on 11 January, although the court in the previous hearings have demanded more evidence.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rejected the allegations as baseless. Senior leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said the allegations were an attempt by the Congress leader, who he said was frustrated at leading his party to successive electoral defeats, to deflect attention from the probe into the AgustaWestland chopper scam in which the investigation could lead up to the doorstep of the first family of the Congress party.
The allegations come in the wake of a washed out winter session of Parliament where a united opposition had asked questions of the government for its ‘note ban’ decision, with Gandhi declaring at a press conference on December 14, two days before the session ended, that he had information of “personal corruption” by the PM but is not being allowed to speak in Lok Sabha by treasury benches. Members of Parliament of 15 other political parties were present at Gandhi’s press conference. Speculation since then has been rife on what the nature of evidence that Gandhi has on Modi.
According to Bhushan, the documents also suggest that the recipients of cash payments included a top leader of Madhya Pradesh, and of Chhattisgarh, a second rung BJP leader from Mumbai, a former Delhi chief minister and a former minister of environment and forest in the Congress-led UPA government.
Today, Gandhi’s public rally ended a little after 4pm, followed by the BJP rebuttal at 5.30pm, which was to begin at 5pm where party chief Amit Shah was to speak, but eventually Prasad took his place. This was followed by Congress spokesperson Surjewala’s press conference at 6 pm, and a little later that of Kejriwal. Soon after, Bengal CM Banerjee and Yechury issued statements. Surjewala said the Congress demand was simple enough – that Modi deny that he had received any payments, indicating that the Congress might have more evidence on the issue.
The documents were seized in the raids on Birla group companies in 2013, and on Sahara India Group in the national capital region on 22 November 2014. Gandhi alleged that there are noting of Sahara officials that they had paid nine times to Modi between October, 2013 and February, 2014. He said that documents with Income Tax departments reveal that the Birla group paid Rs 12 crore to Modi, of a total of Rs 25 crore, when he was Gujarat chief minister.
“These documents are with the IT Department for the last two and a half years. Why aren’t these being investigated,” Gandhi asked. Kejriwal alleged that the matter was being probed by officers in the Income Tax department that are favourable to the current government, and that is why there is no progress. Kejriwal also bemoaned that he has been raising the issue for several months but the media ignored it.
The BJP said Modi is as clean as river Ganga. Prasad said the people have stopped giving Rahul Gandhi any TRPs, and the media should think whether it is merits giving any coverage to allegations made by him, particularly when the Supreme Court in its hearings in the case have pointed out the lack of evidence.
