New Delhi: The Congress is planning to approach both the people’s court as well as the apex court over the income tax case, which led to the blocking of the party's bank accounts weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. According to party insiders, the state unit chiefs will hold pressers on March 22 to highlight how the freezing of bank accounts is hampering basic poll campaigns, including booking advertisement slots on the media, arranging publicity material and moving people across the country.
Later, the state unit chiefs will take the matter to the people and the party would also ask the candidates and the workers for financial help. The state unit chiefs will flag the concern that the grand old party was pushed into the polls without a level playing field, something that had not happened in independent India so far.
They will also highlight that political parties are not supposed to pay income tax, but the grand old party was forced to do so in two separate cases. One case is 7-8 years old while another one is related to decades ago when Sitaram Kesri was AICC treasurer. The party leaders will also flag that though the income tax rules allowed for a maximum of Rs 10,000 penalty for late filing of income tax returns, the Centre was now slapping extremely high penalties and had also taken away money from the party’s bank accounts.
According to party insiders, the party managers decided to field the top leadership, including ex-presidents Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and incumbent chief Mallikarjun Kharge to make a mass appeal over the tax case. At another level, top legal brains, including former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Salman Khurshid and Vivek Tankha are working on the options available with the grand old party.
The party had approached the High Court seeking relief from the order of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, but was asked to go to the Tax Tribunal again. Therefore, the party is now planning to approach the Supreme Court, which recently ordered the SBI to furnish all details of the electoral bonds.
As the Congress has been alleging corruption in the sale of electoral bonds the party managers are also working to make more data public, which would point fingers at the massive give and take in the sale of poll bonds. According to party insiders, out of the poll bonds worth Rs 8,000 crore, around Rs 4,000 crore was directly linked to contracts worth Rs 4 lakh crore announced by the Central government.
Also, the fact that while the BJP received 56 per cent of total bonds, Congress got only 11 per cent. The state unit chiefs will also highlight that once the top court had declared the electoral bonds as illegal, how could the donations made through it be termed legal and why was the BJP not paying any taxes on funds it collected? Earlier, the Congress had alleged that several companies, who had been raided by central agencies, made donations worth several hundred crores to the BJP through electoral bonds, pointing at an ‘extortion’ of sorts.
Read more: Congress To Bank On Alliances, Good Candidates, Solid Campaign In Lok Sabha Polls
