(From left): Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, party President Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader KC Venugopal address a press conference in New Delhi.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday described the refusal of a court to take cognizance ED's money laundering chargesheet against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case as a "slap on the face" of the ruling BJP and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Claiming that the court order must serve as a lesson to the prime minister and the home minister against misusing the CBI, ED and other agencies, he told a press conference that the party would expose the ruling BJP's "vendetta politics", while vowing that the party will use all the fora from the 'street to Parliament' to expose the government and teach it a lesson.
"I want to say that after this judgement Modi and Shah should resign because the court decision is like a slap on their face. They should give resignation as they should not harass people like this," Kharge, who was flanked by leaders K C Venugopal, Abhishek Singhvi, Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera, said.
He said Modi-Shah should know that if they do such things, people will "not tolerate it and will not sit quiet". He said Congress has been fighting the issue politically by taking out marches since its top leadership was summoned by the probe agencies.
Kharge claimed that there have been more than 50 such key opposition leaders whom the Modi government has made full efforts to intimidate and blackmail by misusing the ED, CBI, and IT in the past 11 years.
He also said the December 16 court ruling in favour of the Gandhis has "completely exposed the false allegations, conspiracy, and vengeful intent" levelled by the Modi government against the leaders of his party.
Venugopal said, "we will expose this vendetta politics on the streets of the country. The entire nation is now agitating. The Congress has faced continuous harassment by the ED. Our top leadership is being targeted through vendetta politics, and this has agitated every worker. We will demonstrate our strength across India," he said.
Singhvi, who fought the case for the Gandhis in the court, said, "The law has spoken louder than noise and fiction. They made a money-laundering mansion on the quicksand of an absent, elusive FIR. There is no FIR. Investigative overreach has met judicial oversight. Courts are not theatres for political scripts."
"There was written ‘noting’ on the files by the CBI and the ED between 2014 and 2021 that no predicate offence was made in the complaint filed by a private person, Subramanian Swamy. The court refused to take cognisance at the very threshold stage of criminal law, holding that even the minimum legal requirements for proceeding under the PMLA were not met," he said.
He claimed that suddenly in June 2021, despite adverse noting, the ED went ahead to file ECIR on the orders from the top. "This was a strange and unique case registered by the ED, in which not a penny had been moved and not an inch of an immovable property had been transferred from one person to another," he added.