‘Sonia declines to provide tax information’ was a news item that appears in the papers on the 25th Feb. (see news item below). She has cited personal freedom and security risk. One is puzzled on what security risk is there if she discloses her tax returns. Does this security risk pertain only to Mrs Sonia and not to the others who disclose their income tax returns? She has also cited personal freedom. Is personal freedom an exclusive right of Mrs Sonia. So the others who disclose their income tax returns have no personal freedom. It looks like Mrs Sonia Gandhi is afraid and is not comfortable in this area because she has much to fear. It is a known fact that she has amassed assets and wealth disproportionate to her known income.
It seems that only Mrs Sonia Gandhi has the right to privacy. Transparency is a must for all public servants and Mrs Sonia Gandhi is no private person. If all MPs can disclose their incomes and if others who are requisitioned under the RTI can oblige, what is the problem with Mrs Sonia Gandhi. How can she claim that her income tax returns are ‘private in nature’. This cannot be allowed to go without being challenged. It seems that Mrs Sonia Gandhi is not all that clean in this area. There have been time and again the alleged accusations that money-looted has flowed into her kitty. If this is to be disclaimed then it is for her to be more transparent in her money affairs. She is a public personality and has to disclaim these allegations through her readiness to be transparent.
One cannot have two yardsticks — one for the other politicians and one for her. What is this exclusive right she is claiming? I do not know how the chief public information officer will take this forward. It seems that Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her children are enjoying unfettered rights — they are outside the overview of the ordinary law.
Similarly for the CBI to turn down the plea of Dr Swamy on probing Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s role in Bofors is also unacceptable. The claim of the CBI director that unless new evidence was presented the case cannot be reopened does not hold water. But new evidence will surface only if Mrs Sonia Gandhi is probed. Evidence will not fall from the heavens. When it has been stated by both the CBI records and the Swedish authorities that Indian agencies had failed to interrogate Mrs Sonia Gandhi, it reveals a fraud played on the people of India, There seems to be a cover-up. Why this sheltering of Mrs Sonia Gandhi against even justice. She has to be exposed and she should readily accept to be probed if she is clean.
In the disclosure of the income tax returns also Mrs Sonia should be treated as others and compelled to disclose. There seems to be something fishy and stinking. Escaping the disclosure directly points at some thing Mrs Sonia has to hide. It makes her an alleged defaulter and more doubts are created. No matter how high you are the law is above you Mrs Sonia Gandhi. And she goes about campaigning that the Congress is against corruption and wants clean governance. The test of the pudding is the eating of it. It is for Mrs Sonia Gandhi to stand this test of transparency and fight against corruption in her own affairs when it comes to income and probe on the Bofors issue. Otherwise these two will stick to her permanently –who is she afraid of? She cannot demand of others what she herself is refusing to undergo. This is exactly what I had written of the forked-tongued Congress. And what is she afraid of? A dirty HAND cannot usher in clean governance.
Times of India, Mumbai, Feb. 25, 2012
CHENNAI: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has declined to disclose details of her income tax returns under the RTI Act, citing personal freedom and security risk. In her reply to the I-T department, she also said there was no public interest involved in disclosing such information.
Chennai-based RTI activist V Gopalakrishnan had sought details of her I-T returns from the year 2000-2001 to 2010-2011. The assistant commissioner of income tax, New Delhi, who is also the chief public information officer (CPIO), wrote to the UPA chairperson on January 23 as per Section 11 of the RTI Act, 2005, seeking her response to the application. In her reply, Sonia said disclosure of such private information to third parties in guise of transparency in public life would amount to unwarranted invasion of the individual’s privacy. The information submitted to the I-T department by an individual was confidential and private in nature and cannot be disclosed as per Section 138 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, she said.
This is the second time that the CPIO has rejected the petition. The application was first rejected without even seeking objection from Sonia. After the appellate authority’s intervention last month on Gopalakrishnan’s plea, the CPIO sought a response from Sonia. “By not calling for an objection, the CPIO has ignored the possibility of the third-party expressing willingness for disclosure of personal I-T information,” the authority had said.
Filed under: india | Tagged: black money, bofors, corruption, foreign funds, income tax returns, india, indian politics, nehru-gandhi family, political corruption, public information officer, sonia gandhi, swiss bank accounts |
BHARATA BHARATI 
Polls 2012: Rahul Gandhi knocked down by cycle – Anil Sharma, Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr & Vineeta Pandey | New Delhi | DNA | March 7, 2012
The elephant was left dazed, the lotus never bloomed and the hand just could not lift. But the cycle rolled on. And as the father-son duo of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav romped home in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi’s Mission 2012 was in tatters.
In the process, the Samajwadi Party (SP) struck gold in UP and dethroned arch-rival Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) besides foiling the ambitions of the Congress to gain an influential foothold in the state. What mattered most was that it won a majority on its own.
Elsewhere too the Congress was battered. It was thrown out of power in Goa and it failed to dislodge the Akali-BJP combine in Punjab. The only solace was Uttarakhand, where the grand old party just scraped through, and Manipur, where it almost swept to victory.
In Punjab, for the first time in 46 years, the incumbent government broke the “revolving door” pattern and retained power.
The results showed that Rahul Gandhi got it all wrong during his hectic campaign. His party failed even in the assembly segments in his family strongholds of Amethi and Rae Bareli, despite the important supporting role played by his sister Priyanka.
In UP, Congress stalwarts fell by the wayside. Union law minister Salman Khurshid’s wife, Union steel minister Beni Prasad Verma’s son and senior Congress leader Jagdambika Pal’s son lost by huge margins.
As for Rahul, he shed his usual diffidence and candidly acknowledged his failure in front of the media: “I was trying to improve the political system of the country but the fundamentals of our party were weak. I take full responsibility for the defeat. I take it in my stride. We have to move on.” Gracious in defeat, Gandhi congratulated SP leaders Mulayam and Akhilesh.
Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh conceded defeat with all humility. “We failed to convince people that our party was capable of forming a government on its own by unsettling the BSP.” He did pay the customary compliments to Rahul for his contribution in the campaign and blamed the state leadership as well as himself for not being able to translate Rahul’s efforts into seats.
He even offered to resign as the general secretary in charge of UP affairs but maintained that it was strictly a matter between him and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
None of the moves made during the campaign phase like announcing 4.5% quota within the OBC quota for Muslims, attracting candidates from other parties, getting SP Rajya Sabha member Rashid Masood to join the party paid dividends to the Congress.
With SP firmly in the saddle, it now seems that Union minister Beni Prasad Verma’s post-poll remark that the BSP, as an ally, is 1,000 times better than the SP may return to haunt the party.
In UP, it was clear that the Muslims did not trust the Congress and instead went with Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) who had promised jobs and laptops. But more than that he raised hopes for a change in the political approach of his party with a pledge that “goonda raj” would be done away with. The rout of Mulayam Singh and his cohorts in 2007 was because SP hooligans had alienated people. Also, without Amar Singh and his Bollywood bandwagon, Akhilesh Yadav was focussed in his approach towards canvassing for his party nominees and introduced crucial changes in SP’s overall outlook.
What is worse, the Congress failed to reap the dividends of anti-incumbency plaguing Punjab. Rahul’s strategy failed in Punjab where he specially projected Amrinder Singh as a candidate for the chief minister’s post. But the Parkash Singh Badal government fought back the unpopularity.
No wonder these results, according to BJP president Nitin Gadkari, is a clear rejection of the Congress and is a pointer to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Arun Jaitley, leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha, said these results coupled with the recent Maharashtra civic poll results show a trend — people are dissatisfied with the Congress.
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