Modi got kickbacks from industry: Rahul Gandhi

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, demanded an independent inquiry into the allegations

The Opposition parties, led by the Congress, on Wednesday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal integrity saying he should come clean on whether he had received cash payments, in excess of Rs 40 crore, from the Sahara and Aditya Birla groups in 2012-13, when he was the Gujarat chief minister.
 
While Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, at a public rally in Mehsana in Gujarat, demanded an independent inquiry into the allegations, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, who had raised the issue a couple of months ago, said the PM should quit till his name is cleared.
 
The Congress and Aam Aadmi Party chief Kejriwal asked of Modi to follow the example of his mentor L K Advani, who had in 1996 quit his Lok Sabha membership after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charged him in the ‘Jain hawala diaries’ case. Gandhi and Kejriwal found support from West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee who demanded a thorough investigation into the Sahara diaries. Communist Party of India (Marxist) chief Sitaram Yechury said that Sahara diaries and the allegations against Modi “are very serious and must be investigated”.

 

The Opposition’s allegations relate to documents, including an email, recovered in the raids of the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Income Tax Department on Sahara and Birla group of companies in 2013 and 2014. These documents are now part of a court case in the Supreme Court filed by NGO Common Cause, represented by lawyer Prashant Bhushan in the court. The next hearing of the case is on January 11, although the court in the previous hearings had demanded more evidence.
 
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rejected the allegations as ‘baseless’. Party leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said the allegations were an attempt by Gandhi, who 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 BJP said Modi is “as clean as river Ganga”. The allegations come in the wake of a washed-out winter session of Parliament, where a united Opposition questioned the government on the ‘note ban’ decision. Gandhi said at a press conference on December 14, two days before the session ended, that he had information of “personal corruption” by the PM but was not being allowed to speak in the 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 United Progressive Alliance government.

 
On Wednesday, Gandhi’s public rally ended around 4:00 pm. The BJP’s rebuttal came in at 5.30 pm. The BJP’s press conference was to begin at 5:00 pm where party chief Amit Shah was to speak, but eventually Prasad took his place.
 
This was followed by Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala’s press conference at 6:00 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 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 November 22, 2014. Gandhi alleged that there are notings of Sahara officials that they had paid nine times to Modi between October 2013 and February 2014.
 
He said the documents with the income-tax departments reveal that the Birla group paid Rs 12 crore to Modi, out of a total of Rs 25 crore, when he was the Gujarat CM.
 
“These documents have been with the I-T department for the past two-and-a-half years. Why aren’t these being investigated?” Gandhi asked. Kejriwal alleged 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.