Congress’s top leadership involved in ‘land grab’, alleges BJP

PTI New Delhi: The BJP on Monday alleged that the entire top leadership of the Congress is involved in corruption relating to land transactions and said they should resign on moral grounds after being “exposed” BJP spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi’s sharp attack on the Congress came after a trust linked to its president Mallikarjun Kharge’s family withdrew its request for the allotment of five acres of civic amenity site in Bengaluru to set up a ‘Multi-Skill Development Centre, Training Institutes and Research Centre’. The move by Congress president Kharge’s son Rahul Kharge, who heads the trust, comes close on the heels of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s wife Parvathi returning the 14 sites to the Mysuru Urban Development Authority after the Lokayukta police registered a case against Siddaramaiah, his wife and brother-in-law. Trivedi said these decisions were triggered by adverse CAG reports and legal proceedings, and amounted to a virtual admission that the transactions were wrong.

It was done to escape humiliation in legal proceedings, he claimed. These leaders have been exposed, he said. A party, which was once associated with Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave’s “bhu daan” (giving away land in charity), is now neck deep in “bhu harap” (land grab) under the “inspiration” of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, he alleged. The BJP MP noted in the press conference that both Gandhis are accused in the National Herald case, which pertains to alleged capture of the company’s properties at a highly nominal rate, and added that the probe began in the case on a court’s direction before his party came to power in 2014. Such allegations involving land have been levelled against Ashok Gehlot, Kamal Nath and Bhupesh Baghel, both former chief ministers, and D K Shivakumar, the Karnataka deputy chief minister, among others, he added. “It clearly shows that the entire top leadership of the Congress is involved in corruption involving land-grabbing,” he said. Corruption comes naturally to the Congress, he said. “Should not those who returned land resign on moral grounds,” he asked. The so called ‘mohabbat ki dukan’ of Rahul Gandhi looks like the shop of a land mafia, he said.

Claiming that such serious allegations if levelled against BJP leaders would have created a storm, he said the “silence” of opposition INDIA bloc shows the support its parties offer each other in corruption. Trivedi made light of suggestions of some Congress leaders that nothing is left to probe after the land was returned by those facing allegations, saying a thief is not left unscathed if he decided to return the stolen assets. To questions about communal tensions in Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh, he claimed it is part of a wider conspiracy targetng ndian institutions and society.