Congress hails SC verdict on Rahul, attacks Kejriwal indirectly

New Delhi  :  The Congress Thursday hailed the Supreme Court order giving a clean chit to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in an alleged rape case and indirectly attacked anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal over his allegations against party leaders over the past few weeks.

Hours after the Supreme Court said the allegation of gang rape against the Congress general secretary and his friends was fake and ordered Rs.5 lakh compensation to him for damage to his reputation, the Congress said it viewed the judgment in the wider context of “baseless” allegations being made in the public realm.

Congress media department chairman Janardan Dwivedi said “baseless, cheap allegations” were being made which are “dangerous for democracy”.

He said the Congress had been working for over 125 years and there must be some qualities and positive attributes to the party. Congress had never made baseless allegations aimed at political gains, he stressed.

“Congress never used such tools… It is our effort to remain a picture of the entire society,” Dwivedi said.

“(Winning) on the basis of crime is not acceptable to the Congress. Everybody should be concerned about this,” he added.

Without naming Kejriwal and his associates in India Against Corruption who have plans to launch a political party, Dwivedi said they were making false allegations. “From where this has begun… If the birth is on the basis of falsehood, where will it end… I don’t know,” he said.

Kejriwal has been attacking Law Minister Salman Khurshid over allegations of misuse of funds in an NGO headed by him and the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government in Haryana over alleged favours in land deals to Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Kejriwal had also questioned Hooda over transfer of an Indian Administrative Service officer Ashok Khemka, alleging that he was shunted out because he ordered a probe into land deals between Vadra and realty major DLF.

Dwivedi said the Congress-led government had brought the Right to Information Act but it was being misused for blackmail, settling personal scores and impair administration.

He also called upon the media to desist from sensationalism.

The Supreme Court Thursday gave a clean chit to Gandhi, saying that the 2006 allegation of gang rape against him and his friends was fake.

The court said the allegation was “without substance and not even an iota of evidence” and added that Kishore Smrite, who had petitioned the Allahabad High Court in 2011, “did not approach the high court with clean hands”.