The Congress party has reacted on the fresh I-T department notices demanding to pay ₹1,823.08 crore. Isuuing a statement, the party said, “Yesterday, we received fresh notices from the IT department to pay ₹1823.08 crores. Already the IT department has forcibly taken away ₹135 crores from our Bank account.”
“Before the dust could settle on that vindictive unprecedented action, now in a patently illegal and undemocratic action the frontal organisation of the BJP – namely the Income Tax Department – has launched its next premeditated, diabolical campaign against the INC. 8 years of Income Tax returns of the INC have been reopened on baseless, manufactured grounds to levy patently illegal Income Tax Demand orders totalling thousands of crores of rupees.”
While addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters along with Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh, party treasurer Ajay Maken alleged that the BJP is in serious violation of income-tax laws and added that a penalty of ₹4,600 crore should put on the saffron party.
“…We have analysed all violations of the BJP using the same parameters they used to analyse our violations… BJP has a penalty of ₹4600 crore. The income Tax department should raise a demand from the BJP for the payment of this amount…,” Maken said.
On the notices, Maken said, “We have received notices from the time of Sitaram Kesari, from 1993-94… We have been demanded to pay ₹53 crores from the time of Sitaram Kesari. A total of ₹1823 crores has been made by the IT department from Congress.” “Do you know how much ₹1800 crore is?… In 2019, our entire election expenditure was ₹800 crores…” the Congress leader questioned.
During the conference, Ramesh alleged that through the “electoral bonds scam”, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) collected ₹8,200 crore and used the route of “pre-paid, post-paid, post-raid bribes and shell companies”.
“Efforts are being made to financially cripple the Congress, but we are not going to be cowed down,” Ramesh said.
Earlier on 21 March, the Congress party claimed that all the bank accounts of the party have been frozen and the party was not being able to pay even ₹2 to do the campaign work. Rahul Gandhi said the action against the account of the grand old party came two months before the Lok Sabha election campaign. “One notice comes from the 90s, another from 6-7 years ago,” Gandhi said. “20 per cent of India votes for us and we are not able to pay ₹2 for anything. It has been orchestrated to cripple us in the elections. Even if our bank accounts are unfrozen today, huge amount of debt damage has been done to Indian democracy.”
