SC to hear SLP filed by Sonia and Rahul ondec4init assessment case

NEW DELHI: The Congress has maintained that the Supreme Court will hear on December 4 a special leave petition filed by United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi and senior party leader Oscar Fernandes, challenging a Delhi high court order upholding the Income Tax department’s decision to re-open the Income Tax assessments of the petitioners for 2010-11.

“The matter was admitted by the Supreme Court and it has agreed to hear it on the December 4. Appearing for the Income Tax Department, the government counsel was offered the option of either having a notice issued and the matter stayed or to agree to have the matter heard at an earliest date.

“The government counsel chose to have the matter heard at the earliest,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said.

He said the Supreme Court also sought an assurance from the government counsel to not to have any proceedings in this case in the interim. “The government counsel agreed,” Tewari said.

A Supreme Court bench, comprising Justice AK Sikri and Justice Abdul Nazeer, while hearing the matter on Tuesday accepted the assurance of solicitor general Tushar Mehta that the re-assessment would not proceed till the apex court finally hears the arguments.

The solicitor general expressed his preference for an expeditious final hearing to which the court acceded.

Ihave always wanted to come here. In our early days, we were just focused on building. We were also going down all the time so we had to stay next to the machine. So, we didn’t have a lot of time to travel.

In the US, conservatives have alleged Twitter has a leftleaning bias. We are witnessing a similar phenomenon in India with Hindu rightwing users. Your views?

We need to operate with impartiality. Not neutrality but impartiality and there is a difference between the two. Neutrality is very passive; impartiality means that we are taking actions and writing policy that does not have a particular bias or doesn’t favour one person over another for the wrong reasons. We write our policies and we write our enforcement with that in mind. Anytime we feel that we have failed, we admit it publicly and then we correct it. The most important thing we can do is be transparent.

› The matter was admitted by the Supreme Court and it has agreed to hear it on Dec 4. The government counsel chose to have the matter heard at the earliest MANISH TEWARI , Congress leader

Can we expect Twitter to specify why it removes people from the service?

That was lacking in the past. We weren’t transparent around the reason why? We are getting bet-