National Herald Slugfest Could Derail Reforms

The Congress high command seems to have changed its strategy pertaining to “National Herald” case.

A company was created for the objective of starting a newspaper “National Herald”.

Amid the raging row over National Herald case, the Congress today asserted that the allegations and “insinuations” against party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are “deliberately orchestrated”, “patently false” and “defamatory” as they have “not received a rupee”.

Days after that meeting the parties are still to come up with a solution.

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said “democracy can not function at the whims and fancies of anyone” in what was his sharpest attack on the Congress since Parliament’s winter session began two weeks ago, party president Sonia Gandhi dismissed his remarks by saying, “Let him say what he wants”. Sibal referred to comments made by revenue ministers of BJP-ruled Maharashtra and Haryana governments favouring cancellation of leases of properties of National Herald or its holding companies and asked “Is this not political vendetta?” “Gujarat and MP opposed it”, the former finance minister said, adding he is “happy that those who had held this Bill are now supporting it”.

In recommendations that could help in breaking the GST logjam, the panel headed by Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian had in its report on December 4 suggested dropping additional one per cent tax on inter-state sales over and above the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rate. Congress leader Manish Tewari accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of hypocrisy, and said that the party was trying to portray the GST bill as their only issue.

Naidu said that the Congress was harming the nation by disturbing the proceedings of the Parliament.

“Indian economy has not gone into deep freeze” because of non-passage of the measure, Sharma who was Commerce and Industry Minister during UPA said charging the Modi government of “mismanaging the economy”. The publications never acquired the status of papers associated with leaders like Aurobindo and Tilak; they were not official party media but were kept afloat by the Congress until their closure in 2008.

Rahul said in Guwahati on Saturday that the National Herald case had no bearing on the GST Bill.

BJP accused Congress of indulging in “fake fights” over “manufactured issues and lies” to obstruct the functioning of Parliament.

Although the meetings are likely to continue, senior NDA leaders are not confident that crucial legislation, including the GST and real estate bills, will get cleared in the ongoing winter session of Parliament.