Congress: “Tax terrorist” government ignores BJP’s violation of standards

NEW DELHI: The Congress announced that it has received a new demand for income tax of Rs 1,823 crore. It claimed that the Modi government is ‘tax terrorism’ against it for small-scale infractions and formalities in an attempt to financially devastate it before the Lok Sabha elections, while it has ignored similar large-scale violations by the BJP.

At a news conference, AICC Treasurer Ajay Maken said Based on entries in some “challaned diaries” purportedly found from Kamal Nath and D K Shivakumar, the Congress is being held tax liable. However, the government has not taken any action regarding the “Birla-Sahara dairies,” which list PM Modi as a purported beneficiary, or the “Yediyurappa diaries,” which contain the names of senior BJP leaders. Referring to them as “manufactured and planted diaries” that were obtained via “so-called raids” on third parties by “BJP’s frontal organisation I-T,” he said that a number of these parties had been granted court stay orders due to the tainted search processes by I-T.

Why is the BJP’s attempt to destroy the opposition being ignored by the EC? Congress
AICC treasurer Ajay Maken said on Friday that two other INDIA bloc parties, in addition to the Congress, had gotten I-T notifications and would collaborate to counter the BJP’s tax attack.
Maken said that a new tax demand of Rs 1,823 crore was delivered to the Congress on Thursday. The penalties for 1993, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, according to him, are Rs 54 crore, Rs 182 crore, Rs 179 crore, Rs 918 crore, and Rs 490 crore. He claimed that the government had already taken the Rs 153 crore that the Congress had filed for 2017–18, with the party’s own MLAs and MPs contributing Rs 14 lakh.
“Why is the I-T department being allowed to be used as a weapon to harass Congress?” questioned Party Chairman Mallikarjun Kharge.

According to Maken, the Congress examined the BJP’s 2017–18 Election Commission files and discovered that 1,297 contributions totaling Rs 42 crore were recorded without a name or address, a repeated violation of the Representation of People’s Act reporting format. “It has frozen the accounts of Congress MPs and MLAs for deposits totaling Rs. 14 lakh, but it hasn’t acknowledged the BJP’s Rs. 42 crore.” “BJP should face a demand of Rs 4,600 crore if we apply the same criteria that the I-T department used to impose penalties and tax demands on Congress,” he said, threatening to file a public interest lawsuit (PIL) to force the BJP to make the payment.
He issued a warning about the “threat to democracy,” citing entries from the late Sitaram Kesri’s AICC tenure in 1993 and those going back seven years as “tax terror” against Congress in the run-up to elections.

According to Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh, the BJP has engaged in “tax terrorism” to weaken opposition parties like the Congress before elections, in addition to its “electoral bonds scam” to launder Rs 8,200 crore via “prepaid, postpaid, and post-raid bribes and shell companies.”
questioned why Congress, a political group immune from taxes like others, will be “forced” to pay income tax in the 2024 elections.

“What makes EC a silent bystander? Is the BJP not making a blatant effort to financially cripple the opposition unlawfully with this? Can 2024 still be referred to as a free and fair election?” he questioned.