PIL in SC seeks NIA probe into 2008 Rahul-Xi agreement

NEW DELHI: A day after BJP raised questions against Congress for signing a memorandum of understanding with the Communist Party of China in 2008, a PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking an NIA probe into the controversy.
The petition, jointly filed by a lawyer and a journalist running a news portal, alleged that details of the agreement should be made public as the MoU was signed with a hostile country and national security cannot be compromised.
“The true spirit of liberty, equality, and fraternity could be achieved through medium of transparency and proper investigation and just judgement which could be achieved only if the agreement is investigated and secured by National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967,” the petition said.
In 2008, Rahul Gandhi, then a Congress general secretary, and Xi Jinping, then a senior functionary of his party and now China’s president, had signed the MoU in Beijing for exchanging highlevel information and cooperation between them.