- Wednesday, March 12, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
AS many as 75 parliamentarians of India’s opposition Indian National Congress, including leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha or Upper House of the parliament Mallikarjun Kharge, former ministers such as P Chidambaram, Shashi Tharoor and others and several workers were detained by the Delhi Police on Thursday (21) for holding demonstrations against the questioning of the party’s interim president Sonia Gandhi by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald money-laundering case in New Delhi.
Among other Congress leaders detained were Ajay Maken, Manickam Tagore, KC Venugopal, Adhir Ranjan Chaudhry, Sachin Pilot, Harish Rawat, Ashok Gehlot and K Suresh.
In Nagpur in the western state of Maharashtra, too, workers of the Congress party were detained after they came out to protest. Protests were held in state capital Mumbai too. In several parts of the country, Congress workers staged protests and in some places, violence was witnessed. While they stopped three trains in Delhi, a car was set ablaze in Bengaluru in the southern state of Karnataka which is ruled by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Six people were arrested in connection with the incident. In the national capital, the police resorted to using water cannons to disperse the protesters from the opposition party.
Mumbai Congress under the leadership of President Sh. @BhaiJagtap1 is protesting against unfair ED summons to AICC President Smt. Sonia Gandhi.
We won't tolerate BJP's vendetta politics.#सत्य_साहस_सोनिया_गांधी pic.twitter.com/ldj07pzD02
— Mumbai Congress (@INCMumbai) July 21, 2022
Delhi | Water cannons being used at Congress workers protesting over ED probe against party chief Sonia Gandhi in National Herald case pic.twitter.com/rct7KZYAc3
— ANI (@ANI) July 21, 2022
Meanwhile, the 75-year-old Sonia, who is not keeping well of late, was being interrogated by ED officials. Her daughter and senior Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accompanied her to the ED office. Rahul Gandhi, former Congress president who was also quizzed for marathon hours over the National Herald case, arrived at the ED office.
“All Congress MPs and CWC Members have courted mass arrest outside our Party headquarters in a show of collective solidarity with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, a target of Vishguru’s political vendetta. We are being taken away to a police station in Old Delhi evidently,” said party leader and former central minister Jairam Ramesh.
Kharge said that the ruling BJP is showing its highhandedness by misusing the probe agencies by asking them to target opposition leaders.
“They (ruling party) want to show how powerful they are. We’ve raised the issue of inflation in Parliament but they’re not ready for discussion. We are now raising the issue of misuse of central probe agencies,” Kharge added.
Congress parliamentarian Deepender S Hooda said that they were protesting peacefully. “We are protesting peacefully. They cannot suppress our voice,” he said.
Gehlot, the chief minister of the north-western state of Rajasthan who is currently in Delhi, slammed the probe and said since Sonia Gandhi is over 70 years old, the ED should have gone to her house for investigation.
“The kind of personality and aura she (Sonia Gandhi) has and since she is more than 70 years old, ED should have gone to her house for investigation. I want to meet the chief of ED and CBI and tell them what people are thinking about central agencies,” said Gehlot.
The Rajasthan chief minister said after his detention, “It is happening for the first time in the country that they are stopping dharna demonstration.”
“There is misuse of agencies in the country… it’s our right to protest in a democracy, but it is also being crushed upon…,” said Pilot.
Earlier, the ED had on June 1 summoned Sonia Gandhi to appear before its investigators on June 8 in the case for the first time in connection with a money-laundering case involving the National Herald.
The ED wants to record both Sonia Gandhi’s statements under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). It also said that the veteran leader would be allowed to go home if she felt unwell during the interrogation.
[With agency inputs]
