New Delhi: Sonia Gandhi, who tested positive for Covid last week, has been advised to rest for a few more days by the doctors but is ready to appear before the Enforcement Directorate on June 8, party sources said on Tuesday.
According to sources, the Congress president is recovering after testing Covid positive on June 2 and is doing fine but needs to rest for a few more days as per medical advice. However, she is prepared to appear in person or through the virtual mode on the scheduled date June 8, said party insiders.
This means that the probe agency now has to decide whether it wants to proceed ahead with the scheduled questioning on Wednesday or wants to postpone the date further. The news of her testing positive for Covid came a day after the Congress said that Sonia Gandhi had received summon from the ED to appear before it on June 8 in the National Herald case.
Rahul Gandhi too had been summoned by the ED in the same case but since he was abroad, the probe agency later gave him a fresh date June 13 to appear before it. According to Congress, the National Herald case is based on false charges of money laundering and the summons to the Gandhis had been issued as part of political vendetta.
“I want to make it clear that the fake issue of AJL, (Associated Journals) is an attempt by BJP’s propaganda machinery to deviate, divert and digress the attention of citizens from the multifarious vital issues of inflation, falling GDP and social unrest, social divisiveness in this country,” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi had said.
Also read: ED summons Rahul and Sonia Gandhi in National Herald case
“What I am telling you now wreaks of vendetta, of pettiness, of fear, of political cheapness. The CBI allegations in this regard or the investigative process in this regard start with a well-known baiter of the Congress Dr Subramanian Swamy and we are taken back to the 2014-15 period. From 2014-15, the ED has not thought it fit till today, because they know, they have no material to seek summons about the Congress president or about the former Congress President. Today on the same facts, exactly the same alleged acts and omissions, not a comma, full stop change, on May 22, you are issued summons to divert attention on the same facts by ED,” he said explaining the party’s point of view in the case.
The Congress leader accused the BJP of using the central probe agencies to threaten its political rivals. “This is a part of a larger disease. A disease, which will consume the ruling party ultimately. The disease is one of attacking every political party purely on vendetta terms from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Farooq Abdullah to DMK functionaries, from Gujarat to West Bengal, from Mevani to Mamata Banerjee and the family of Mamata Banerjee. The BJP has brought or tried to bring malafide to every political opponent under the net of puppet agencies like ED, CBI, IT etc,” said Singhvi, who is a senior Supreme Court advocate.
