Bhubaneswar, Jun 12: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi should confess before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) about his family's involvement in the National Herald case, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said on Sunday.
Addressing a press conference, Patra claimed that the Gandhi family is afraid of facing the ED.
"Rahul Gandhi should go and confess the truth before the ED that he has embezzled Rs 500 crore," the BJP leader said.
"They (Congress) are planning to launch 'Satyagraha'. Please reveal the 'satya' (truth) on National Herald case first," Patra said.
With Rahul Gandhi set to appear before the ED on June 13 in connection with the money laundering case pertaining to the National Herald-Associated Journals Ltd deal, the Congress has decided that all its top leaders and MPs would take out a protest march to the agency headquarters in New Delhi and stage a "satyagraha" against what the party called its "misuse" by the central government.
In an interview with PTI, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram asserted the summons to the former party chief was "baseless" and said it appears that the ED's jurisdiction does not extend to the BJP members or to states ruled by it.
About the ED summons to Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi and the Congress' decision of a show of strength when the former appears before the probe agency on Monday, Chidambaram said, "I speak as a Congress member and an advocate.
The ED's summons to Rahul Gandhi under PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) is baseless." Pointing out that the offence of money laundering requires 'money' and "laundering of money", the former home minister said in the National Herald debt-to-equity conversion, something which lending banks do on a regular basis, there was no transaction of money.
Therefore, how can there be money laundering, he posed. "It is like accusing a person of purse snatching when there was no purse and no snatching," Chidambaram argued.