Cong questions Jaitley's blog post on Herald case

The Congress on Saturday questioned Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over writing a blog on the National Herald case, saying giving opinion amounts to influencing probe by income-tax sleuths.

The Congress, however, seemed to be trying to wriggle out of its stand of disrupting Parliament last week as former Union minister Kapil Sibal said the party would restart printing the National Herald newspaper, established in 1938 by the country’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

“Your finance minister in his blogs and on Facebook says this is an offence under the Income Tax Act. He is the finance minister of this country. Does he have the right to make statements like that? He is giving a sort of indication to the I-T department that you send notice. And what has stopping of Parliament got to do with the case of National Herald. It is nothing to do with it,” said Sibal.

He wrote a piece (“Why the Congress is wrong”), saying the Congress leadership, meaning party chief Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, created a “chakravyuh” for themselves though a “series of financial transactions” and that “they have acquired properties worth a huge amount without spending anything”.
On allegations that shareholders like Shanti Bhushan and Justice Markandey Katju were taken for a ride, he claimed the former Supreme Court judge had never applied to become a shareholder.

He, however, said the charges levelled against Sonia and Rahul Gandhi by the BJP were without any substance.

“There was no cheating in the National Herald case. Young Indian is a Section 25 company that means no money can be shared with any of the shareholders. Nobody has lost any money or made any money in this,” said the senior lawyer.

He termed comments of BJP chief ministers of Maharashtra and Haryana that they would favour cancellation of National Herald properties leased to its holding companies as “political vendetta”.