Congress accuses BJP of turning to ‘tax terrorism’

“I will soon file a public interest litigation (PIL) petition to recover ₹4,600 crore from the BJP for its violations in the past seven years,” he said, adding, “We have analysed all the submissions of the BJP to the Election Commission (EC). The party has faltered every year.”

Party general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal asked the State and District units of the Congress to organise massive protests across the country on Saturday against “the blatant murder of democracy”.

Rahul’s warning

Taking to social media platform X, senior party leader Rahul Gandhi warned that when the government changes, there would be strict action against all those who assaulted democracy.

“Such action will be taken that none will dare to do all this again. This is my guarantee,” Mr. Gandhi said in a post.

Mr. Ramesh said that the BJP had collected ₹8,200 crore through the “electoral bonds scam”. “The BJP believes in one nation and no election,” he said, adding, ”We will not be scared of these notices. We will be more aggressive and fight these polls.” He added that the ruling party wanted to deny a level playing field to others.

Hearing on April 1

The Congress treasurer said that they had moved the Supreme Court and the case relating to the ongoing tax dispute has been listed for hearing on April 1. Asked about the United States government taking note of Congress’s financial troubles, Mr. Maken said “this is an internal matter and the Constitution empowers us to take on the BJP”.

He alleged that the Congress and other likeminded Opposition parties are being selectively targeted by the IT department, which he alleged, is functioning as the BJP’s “frontal organisation” .Though he didn’t reveal the name of the other parties, sources said the CPI(M) and the CPI had also received notices from IT department.

The income tax returns filed by the Congress for eight years have been reopened on “baseless and manufactured” grounds to levy illegal IT demand orders totalling thousands of crores of rupees, Mr. Maken said.