Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Centre launched an investigation into alleged financial and legal violations by three trusts linked to his family. Gandhi said that “those who fight for truth have no price”.
“Mr Modi believes the world is like him,” Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet. “He thinks everyone has a price or can be intimidated.”
Earlier in the day, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that it had set up an inter-ministerial committee to coordinate investigations into alleged violations of the law by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.
The Centre added that the investigation will cover alleged violation of legal provisions of several laws, including the Income Tax Act, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, by the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust and the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. A special director of the Enforcement Directorate will conduct the investigation.
The Congress had said that the Centre’s investigation into the Gandhi family trusts was a witch hunt and an attempt to divert public attention from its own failures. “Facing a barrage of questions on (i) blatant compromise of India’s security interests and territorial integrity, (ii) a shocking mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis which continues to devour lives and livelihood on a daily basis and (iii) unable to arrest the economic recession wreaking havoc on the life of every Indian citizen; a desperate Modi-Shah Government has fallen back on a devious hounding of those exposing its ineptitude by ordering a wholly vicious and vengeful investigation of the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust and the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust,” the party said in a statement.
The Opposition party also asked the Centre whether it would look into donations made to the PM CARES fund by Chinese establishments.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, on the other hand, denied that the decision to open an investigation into the trusts linked to the Gandhis was politically motivated. “These transactions are in public domain,” BJP general secretary P Muralidhar Rao was quoted as saying by PTI. “Our government is committed to transparency. It is natural to investigate these transactions after so much information was recently brought out in public domain.”
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