Attack on Vadra politically motivated: Congress

Accuses BJP of running a campaign targeting Robert Vadra and raking up the controversial deal just before the elections to meet political objective

Congress on Saturday questioned the timing and manner in which information about the pages missing from government records pertaining to DLF-Robert Vadra deal were allowed to circulate in the media and described the entire episode as "politically motivated".

Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi, Congress general secretary Ajay Maken accused BJP of running a campaign targeting Vadra and raking up the controversial deal just before the elections to meet its political objective.

"Yesterday, a day before polling in Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir, there is a news item in a national daily that two pages from a file related to Robert Vadra are missing.

"The whole day, channels discuss it... And what do the papers say today after the political objective has been met and people's minds influenced. In a national daily, page 10, there is a headline Vadra-DLF deal, lost government files found," Maken said.

Referring to more news reports, Maken said government officials were quoted as saying that there was nothing in those pages for which someone would want them destroyed.

Attacking the BJP government in Haryana, he said, "When this report came and the whole day when channels kept discussing it, why were you silent all that time? "Only because for political reasons you wanted that for the whole day one person's reputation should be shredded and tarnished because he is a close relative of Congress president and vice-president," he added.

The Congress leader said a statement by Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had also appeared in a newspaper saying that the government is in possession of a separate copy of the file with all documents in it. "Then why did you not deny the reports earlier?" he asked.

Asserting that Congress believed that Vadra was nowhere on the wrong side of the law, Maken said, "If you look at the pattern being followed for more than one year, this issue is always raised before elections but without any new facts coming to the fore."