A Delhi court on Monday directed the Congress party to submit its balance sheet for the year 2010-2011 in compliance with its order in the National Herald case in which Congress president Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul and five others are accused.
The court's direction came after the counsel appearing for the Indian National Congress informed it that the party needed time to follow the March 11 order by which the documents were sought.
Metropolitan magistrate Lovleen, after hearing the submissions, posted the matter for April 8 for the next hearing on the plea of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy.
The counsel, Badar Mahmood, said the court summons were received only on March 19 and added that there was lack of clarity about the year of which the documents pertain to.
“Summons were not clear as to whether it was for 2010, 2011 or for both,” the counsel said.
A Congress office peon, who appeared in the court, also said that no office-bearer of the party office was present on Saturday to give the documents.
In its March 11 order, the court had also summoned the balance sheet of 2010-2011 of Associated Journals Pvt Ltd, observing that these documents of the INC and AJL could not be referred as ‘personal documents’ of the accused.
However, the counsel appearing for AJL submitted on Monday before the court that the documents summoned by the court are already in the court records which were verified by the officials from the registrar of companies who were summoned thrice during the recording of pre-summoning evidence.
“We are taken for a ride. The documents summoned are already on the record of the court. It’s only for the purpose of publicity that the complainant has filed this complaint as he has been tweeting about this case,” senior advocate R S Cheema, appearing for AJL said, while showing some of Swamy’s tweets to the court.
Swamy had accused Sonia, Rahul and others of allegedly conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by just paying Rs 50 lakh by which Young India obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which the AJL had owed to the Congress party.
