Summoned in middle of Parliament session: Mallikarjun Kharge hits out over ED action

New Delhi, Aug 04: Rajya Sabha witnessed ruckus yet again on Thursday after Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge revealed that he was urgently summoned by the ED.

"I received ED summon, they called me at 12.30pm. I want to abide by law, but is it right for them to summon when Parliament is in session? Is it right for Police to gherao residences of Sonia Gandhi & Rahul Gandhi?..We won't be scared, we'll fight," said LoP in RS, Mallikarjun Kharge.

Responding to him, Union Minister and Leader of the House Piyush Goyal reiterated that the government doesn't interfere in the functioning of central investigative agencies, unlike the era when Congress was in power.

The probe agency temporarily sealed the office space of Young Indian (YI) company in the premises of Congress-owned newspaper National Herald in Delhi as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation.

The seal was put in order to "preserve the evidence" which could not be collected as authorised representatives of YI were not present during the raids that were launched on Tuesday.

The National Herald newspaper is published by Associated Journals Ltd. (AJL) and its holding company is Young Indian. The newspaper office is registered in the name of AJL.

The agency recently carried out the high-profile questioning of Congress president Sonia Gandhi (in July) and her MP son Rahul Gandhi (in June) in this case at its headquarters in Delhi apart from that of Kharge and Bansal in April.

The Congress has said it gave a Rs 90 crore loan to an ailing AJL between 2001-02 and 2010-11 and later, in 2011, the shares of AJL were allotted to Young Indian and this debt was converted into equity and the loan was extinguished in the books of the AJL.

The ED claims these transactions attract anti-money laundering charges as a complex web of transactions and routing of funds were undertaken by the party and its leaders to acquire AJL's assets worth multiple crores of rupees.

The Gandhis are understood to have told the ED during their separate questioning sessions that no personal assets were made in the Congress-AJL-National Herald deal as Young Indian was a "not-for-profit" company established under section 25 of the Companies Act.