Hitting out at Congress for disrupting proceedings in Parliament, Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said the government had no role to play at all in the National Herald case in which Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul have been summoned to appear by the court.
"They should contest it in court. How can you hold the government responsible. It is totally unfair and irresponsible to fix it on the government as they could not face the truth. Yhey are now trying to blame the government," he told reporters outside Parliament.
Congress members, upset over the National Herald case, today paralysed Parliament protesting against alleged "vendetta politics" leading to repeated adjournments in Lok Sabha as well as Rajya Sabha.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Naidu said it was "totally unethical, unfair and undemocratic on the part of the Congress party to obstruct Parliament's functioning on account of the case which has been taken up by the judiciary, where the government has no role to play at all."
He said there is no political vendetta on the part of the government and it is steadfast focussing its attention on the issues of development, repairing the economy, bringing back administration and providing good governance.
Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the case was completely in the domain of the courts. By giving it the dimension that it is political vendetta, "are they (Congress) suggesting that the courts are now playing politics. What a shame Congress party," she said.
Accusing the government of trying to malign his party,
Congress leader Oscar Fernandez, one of the persons summoned by the court in the Herald case, said the case will be fought legally.
"So many legal remedies are present before you. We will be legally fighting the case," he said.
Asked why Congress felt that there was political vendetta, Fernandez alleged that the government has not been able to fulfill any of the promises and the people were seeing failures.
"They are scared of the public opinion going against them. We have seen the mandate in Bihar, Jhabua by-election and the results in Gujarat (local body polls). Fearing these things, they are trying to do everything possible to harm, to malign, to damage the Congress party but it is recoiling on them," he said.
Sitharaman said the matter related to money being allegedly collected for a political party which was used for commercial business which itself was violative of certain penal provisions.
"If this has happened and if the courts find it fit that it has to be heard, it is completely in the domain of the courts.
"A matured party cannot even by remote suggestion indicate that the courts are probably now playing politics. It does not go well for our country. I would rather think be you howsoever high, the law is above you," she said.
On Congress leader and lawyer Abhishek Many Singhvi's charge that the present case is a "proxy litigation", used as a "political vendetta" by BJP to attack senior Congress persons, Sitharaman said he wants the public to believe that the courts were yielding to political pressure which is non-existant.
Naidu said, "The case, in my knowledge, was started before our government came. So at that time also we had taken initiative or what...
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Naidu also referred to a Delhi court dismissing a criminal complaint seeking lodging of an FIR against Union minister V K Singh for his alleged "dog" remarks in the aftermath of burning alive of two Haryana Dalit children.
"They have raised the issue of V K Singh. What happened to V K Singh, how the court felt about it. The court has totally quashed it," he said.
Naidu said Congress also raised the issue of intolerance and it has "boomeranged" on them. "They have been exposed on this count also."
With regard to the issue of Nepal, he said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj gave an excellent response yesterday.
"We should not try to politicitise such larger issues concerning the national interest, that too issues of external relations. We should speak in one voice," he said, appealing to Congress not to disrupt Parliament.
