What to Watch Out For Priyanka Gandhi takes charge as AICC Gen Sec as husband Robert Vadra faces ED probe
Newly appointed All India Congress Committee’s General Secretary for Uttar Pradesh East, Priyanka Gandhi took up office on Wednesday. Gandhi came to take charge as the Congress General Secretary at the party headquarters after dropping off her husband Robert Vadra at the Enforcement Directorate’s Office.
"I stand by my family," she asserted to hordes of waiting cadres and journalists.
Vadra, who will undergo a second round of questioning today, is facing a probe in a money laundering case relating to the alleged possession of illegal foreign assets.What happened: Robert Vadra was reportedly grilled for five hours by the ED on late Wednesday evening over his connection with an alleged money laundering case related to properties in UK.
The businessman, who was granted interim protection from arrest until February 16, was questioned about his associations with absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. The ED has claimed that Vadra purchased the properties through the Bhandari.Past controversies: Earlier, in 2013 Vadra’s name cropped up in the Manesar land scam case involving the former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda. It was alleged that the Hooda-led Congress Government in Haryana had allotted subsidized land and had changed ‘land use’ permissions for Hooda’s close friends and relatives including the former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law.
The opposition party at the time – the BJP had used this as a linchpin in their campaign against the Congress government, and finally clinched victory in the Assembly Elections.
According to the 80,000-page CBI chargesheet, which was filed at the time, Vadra’s company- Skylight Hospitality had purchased three acres of the land for Rs 7 crores but then went onto sell it for a whopping Rs 58 crore.
In 2012, Arvind Kejriwal, who was an activist in Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement at the time, had also alleged that DLF had given Vadra an interest-free loan of Rs 65-crore in return for political favours by the state Congress goverments. DLF responded by saying that it had dealt with Vadra as a private entrepreneur and that no quid pro quo took place.He said she said: BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra alleged in a press conference that Vadra bought 8 to 9 properties in London from the money he got as kickbacks from a petroleum and a defence deal which took place in 2008-09.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi however claimed the charges against Vadra are "fickle, superficial, non-existent, non-substantive". The BJP had full four and a half years to investigate but could not find anything, he said in another press conference.
Mamata Banerjee also stood by their ally and said," There is no serious case, nothing, just sending the notice casually to everybody. So we stand together, we are united."Kolkata CP Rajeev Kumar to file counter affidavit against CBI before SC
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