Upset over Rahul Gandhi citizenship row, Congress digs out Arun Jaitley-Vijay Mallya connect

Upset over Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan sending a complaint against its vice-president Rahul Gandhi to the House Ethics Committee, Congress on Monday accused finance minister Arun Jaitley of tipping off liquor baron Vijay Mallya to leave the country when they met in the Parliament House on March 1.

Rahul was put on notice on Monday by the 11-member committee, headed by BJP patriarch Lal Krishna Advani, to respond to the “complaint of ethical misconduct given by Subramanian Swamy and forwarded by BJP’s Lok Sabha member Maheish Girri.

The committee’s notice seeks clarification from Rahul whether he once declared himself a British citizen on the legal papers of a company in the UK. In his complaint, Swamy has produced documents to show that Rahul had claimed the British nationality to set up a company in the UK.

The ethics committee has the power to expel a lawmaker. Swamy’s statement in November that Rahul being a British citizen cannot be a member of the Indian Parliament had kicked up controversy. He claimed that he had procured documents from the company law authorities of Britain showing Rahul as “British” on the annual returns of the UK-based “Backops Limited” in 2005 and 2006 as its director and secretary. The Congress had then countered Swamy by releasing another document of the same company in which Rahul declared himself an Indian. The party also described as a “typing error” the discrepancy in the British government’s records that Swamy had highlighted.

Damning the BJP for “malafide and defamatory” campaign questioning Rahul Gandhi’s nationality, the Congress on Monday said, it has been deliberately raked up to divert attention from Vijay Mallya issue, claiming evidence that he was tipped off by none other than Arun Jaitley.

Mallya was present in Parliament on March 1 but he suddenly left the country very next day. Congress spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala dubbed Mallya’s escape as yet another example of the BJP government’s “Fair and Lovely Scheme” of helping those with the black money. What else can be reason for the CBI replacing its Lookout Notice “for detention” with one “for information” only, Surjewala said and posed five questions to Prime Minister Modi to prove his repeated claim of “transparency and accountability”.

As regards repeated questions outside Parliament on Rahul’s citizenship by the BJP leaders, he said: These are nothing more than the continuing political vendetta of the BJP and its leadership against the Congress leadership. The facts in this matter can easily be verified by the Government of the day.”

Congress posers on Mallya

Will government seek “deportation” of Mallya from England for earliest recovery of precious public money amounting to Rs 9,091 crore.

Did Jaitley gave details of his conversation with Mallya before his escape on March 2 to the PM and will he share complete details of the conversation with Parliament?

Did CBI change the lookout notice for detention dated 12.10.2015 into lookout notice for information only on 30.11.2015 under political pressure?

Is it a mere eyewash that the Enforcement Directorate has summoned Mallya on March 18 despite everyone’s knowledge that he has left the country and is refusing to return?

How will the government confiscate for patently illegal receipt of US $40 million by Mallya in a foreign bank account despite the orders of the Bangalore Debt Recovery Tribunal not to allow him get any part of the money he claimed in lieu of sale of the United Spirits to Diageo Private Company of UK through an agreement for $75 million (Rs 515 crore) on February 26?