Tag: BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra

‘COVID Toolkit’ Attributed to Congress Created on Forged Letterhead

The document has been shared in two parts – four pages of a COVID-19 ‘toolkit’ and four pages of research on the issues with the Central Vista project.

An alleged document prepared by the All India Congress Committee (AICC) to “corner the Modi government and various BJP governments in the country” through social media and on-ground strategies was extensively shared by top BJP leaders on May 18. The hashtag #CongressToolKitExposed soon began trending.

The document has been shared in two parts – four pages of a COVID-19 ‘toolkit’ and four pages of research on the issues with the Central Vista project.

The alleged toolkit urges Congress workers, volunteers and supporters to use the term ‘super spreader Kumbh’, ‘not comment on Eid gatherings’, respond to COVID-19 SOS messages ‘only if a person tags the IYC handle’, ‘use dramatic pictures of funerals and dead bodies which is already being done by foreign media’, etc. It also advises social media volunteers to use the term ‘Modi strain’ for the new variant of COVID-19 originating in India, etc.

Part II of the document analyses Prime Minister Modi’s dream project of redeveloping Central Vista. This section lays down the opportunity cost of the project, including COVID-19 vaccines, oxygen cylinders and monetary relief to victims. The document also lists the project’s adverse impact on the environment and architecture.

“It’s deplorable on their part to attempt to spread misinformation during this global catastrophe,” wrote health minister Harsh Vardhan.

Among the other top BJP leaders who amplified #CongressToolKitExposed were Smriti Irani, Tirath Singh Rawat, Piyush Goyal, Rajyavardhan Rathore, Tejasvi Surya, Kiren Rijiju, Anurag Thakur, P.C. Mohan, Hardeep Singh Puri, Shobha Karandlaje, Biren Singh, Pralhad Joshi, Rahul Kaswan, Manoj Kotak and Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.

BJP supporters – Anand Ranganathan, Prashant Patel Umrao, Ankit Jain, Pradeep Bhandari, Shefali Vaidya, Shehzad, Vivek Agnihotri and Akhilesh Mishra – too jumped on the bandwagon. OpIndia and its editor Nupur Sharma and Swarajya did not stay behind as well.

Nearly every media outlet reported on the alleged ‘toolkit’ created by Congress.

Congress terms the toolkit ‘fake’

AICC Research Department chairman Rajeev Gowda told Alt News that the part of the document recommending social media and on-ground strategies (titled ‘Cornering Narendra Modi and BJP on COVID-19 mismanagement’) has not been prepared by his party. The section addressing the issues with the Central Vista project (titled ‘Central Vista Redevelopment: Vanity Project Amidst the Pandemic’) was made by the AICC’s Research Department, he informed.

“This (pages of the Central Vista document viral on social media) is part of a larger six-page document which is a background note on policy and issues facing the nation. They seem to have obtained it illegally, and used it as a model to create a fake document, with forged letterhead,” Gowda furthered.

Also read: The World’s Five Worst Pandemic Leaders

“The Research Department’s mandate is threefold – one, to support Congress MPs in their parliamentary work; two, to expose the failures of non-Congress governments; and three is to ideate about the future,” he said, adding that what should or should not be said on social media is not the mandate for the AICC Research Department. “We tend to focus on factual/fact-checked information that is the basis for arguments, speeches.”

Gowda had also tweeted that the document on “COVID-19 mismanagement” is fake.

Forged letterhead

(Note: This article refers to the four pages of the COVID-19 mismanagement document as COVID-19 toolkit or toolkit, whereas the document on Central Vista has been referred to as the name suggests.)

The letterhead on the Central Vista document does not match the one on the COVID-19 toolkit. The Central Vista document was first made on Microsoft Word and a PDF version was internally circulated, as per Gowda. While there can be differences in style and format on the body of a document, depending on the author, the header and footer on Word remain intact.

As clearly evident, a leaner font has been used on the COVID-19 toolkit. The page numbering doesn’t match either. The number ‘one’ has been written as ‘I’ on the Central Vista document while the other document reads ‘1’.

Gowda also shared an older document with Alt News, prepared by the AICC Research Department. The fonts and style match the legitimate (Central Vista) research but are distinct from the toolkit document. This further indicates that the toolkit is morphed. “I challenge them to produce the original document, and we will get it investigated forensically to expose their lies,” said Gowda.

The difference in the font used can also be spotted on the header. The top left corner of all pages say ‘May 2021’ but the ‘M’ in both documents are noticeably different.

Morphed document – analysis of properties

After Congress leaders, including Priyanka Gandhi, termed the COVID-19 toolkit ‘fake’, several BJP workers and supporters shared what they claim is the properties of the toolkit. Patra also shared a screenshot of the LinkedIn profile of the author of the document, Saumya Varma, who works with Rajeev Gowda.

This prompted Gowda to post another tweet clarifying that AICC indeed prepared a document on Central Vista but the COVID-19 toolkit was “forged and made by the BJP”.

He further said that Sambit Patra is showing the metadata/ author of the real document and attributing it to the fake.

Gowda shared the complete AICC six-page research on Central Vista with Alt News. We also looked at the properties and it is identical to the one shared by the BJP members.

It is noteworthy that the Central Vista document has six pages, which is what the screenshot shared by Patra also says. But a total of eight pages have been shared on social media, this includes four pages of the Central Vista research and four pages of the COVID-19 toolkit. It is clear that the two documents are distinct and the digital footprint shared by Patra is of the document Congress has vouched to be authentic. BJP has failed to provide the digital footprint of the COVID-19 toolkit. As one can clearly spot in both screenshots provided above, Patra has shared metadata of the document ‘Central Vista Vanity Project AICC’.

Also read:‘Kejriwal Has No Competence to Speak on COVID Variants’: MEA After CM’s Singapore Tweet

No evidence of implementation of social media strategies mentioned on the ‘toolkit’

What is a toolkit? It’s a document that lays down strategies for future course of action – what needs to be done and how. The COVID-19 toolkit defines what should be the messaging on social media and the actions that need to be taken on-ground.

However, most of the directions of the toolkit refer to events that have already taken place. A document meant for suggesting courses of action for May 2021 and beyond, has several events which have already occurred in the month of April.

“International media coverage by foreign correspondents in India can be tailored to exclusively focus on Modi and his mismanagement,” says the document prepared in May, whereas international media has been critical of the Modi government since April.

Akhilesh Mishra, former director of the BJP government’s online citizen engagement initiative ‘MyGov India’, shared Rahul Gandhi’s Instagram post depicting mass funerals of COVID-19 victims. Mishra juxtaposed this with an article in The New York Times that also depicts mass funerals. Gandhi’s post is from April 29 and The New York Times article is from April 25, yet Mishra alleged that the ‘toolkit’ is responsible for the report even though the so-called document was prepared a few weeks later.

Mishra is connected with numerous pro-BJP propaganda pages. Alt News’s elaborate report on his ‘BJP connection’ can be read here.

The toolkit also instructs the repeated use of certain words and phrases to create a narrative on social media. To gauge its authenticity, Alt News checked if Congress members and volunteers were using these phrases in an organised manner or whether multiple individuals were using the terminologies. We found this wasn’t the case, and most of the limited usage was by people not associated with Congress.

Rajeev Gowda informed us that the Central Vista research was circulated internally on May 7. The COVID-19 toolkit also says ‘May 2021’ on the top left corner of each page. But in the almost three weeks of this month, none of the ‘strategies’ have been applied.

If ‘super spreader kumbh’ is searched on Twitter, all the recent posts are made by pro-BJP or BJP handles in reference to the Congress toolkit. So we truncated our search till May 17, before the alleged document surfaced. The number of tweets posted with that phrase, having at least one retweet, is countable – 15. Readers can check for themselves here. None of these seem to have been posted by Congress workers.

At another point, the toolkit asks Congress workers to use the phrase ‘Indian strain’ whenever talking about the new mutant coronavirus. It also says that social media volunteers may call it ‘Modi strain’. The term ‘Indian strain’ has mostly been used by the media, both international and domestic. Between May 1 to May 17, there are five handles with at least one retweet that have used the term ‘Modi strain’. Five tweets don’t make a campaign. Social media propaganda demands hundreds of tweets of the same narrative being put out.

BJP members widely shared a tweet by London-based author Sonia Faleiro to support their claim. However, neither has Faleiro used the word ‘strain’ (her tweet says ‘variant’) nor is she associated with Congress.

We found a few more tweets with at least one retweet where ‘Modi variant’ or #ModiVariant has been used. The most prominent among these are by Aparna Jain and Seema Chishti, none of whom are Congress workers.

The ‘toolkit’ then advises the use of specific adjectives for senior BJP leaders. For instance, ‘missing’ Amit Shah, ‘quarantined’ Jaishankar, ‘sidelined’ Rajnath Singh, ‘insensitive’ Nirmala Sitharaman.

That the home minister is ‘missing’ had become a talking point on Twitter after Nagesh Kariyappa, general secretary of the NSUI, filed a missing person’s report with the Delhi police claiming that Shah has disappeared when the country is facing a crisis. Most tweets are regarding his complaint.

‘Quarantined’ Jaishankar does not throw any tweet where the word has been used as an adjective for the foreign minister. An advanced search of ‘sidelined’ Rajnath Singh and ‘insensitive’ Nirmala Sitharaman also do not throw any results. A term has to be used again and again to leave an imprint on people’s mind. Propaganda is not built by scattered use (or in this case, no use at all) but repetition.

The document further advises Congress workers to not respond to COVID SOS messages unless Indian Youth Congress (IYC) is tagged. Below is a screenshot that shows IYC national president Srinivas B V responding to a person who has neither tagged him nor his organisation.

There are many such examples, including Srinivas’s response to BJP MP Hans Raj Hans who had used the hashtags #SOS and #SOSDelhi.

Srinivas had also tweeted photos of oxygen cylinders supplied to a person after anchor Rubika Liyaquat’s tweet. She had also not tagged IYC.

Rajeev Gowda and Congress social media department chairman Rohan Gupta have filed a complaint with the Delhi police commissioner against BJP leaders J.P. Nadda, Sambit Patra, Smriti Irani, B.L. Santhosh, among others for “forging the letterhead of AICC Research Department and thereafter printing false and fabricated content on the same”.

An analysis by Alt News has revealed that the AICC Research Department letterhead has been tampered with in the toolkit document, raising questions about its authenticity. An examination of the content of the document, meant to strategise a future course of action, reveals that it refers to events that have already taken place in the past. BJP till now has only shared screenshots of the alleged toolkit and has failed to produce the original – either the PDF version or the Microsoft Word version. Without the original document, BJP’s claims come across as inauthentic, especially because the ‘toolkit’ is made on a poor copy of the AICC original letterhead.

This article was originally published on Alt News.

BJP’s Demand for CBI Probe Amounts to Admission of Guilt: Congress on Rajasthan Episode

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra alleged that Congress had resorted to “unconstitutional” methods to tap phones of politicians.

New Delhi: BJP on Saturday asked if the Congress government in Rajasthan had resorted to “unconstitutional” methods to tap phones of politicians and demanded a CBI probe into what it called a “saga of illegalities and concocted lies”.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra hit back at the Congress a day after the latter cited some audio clips to accuse some saffron party leaders, including Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, of conspiring to topple the Ashok Gehlot government in the state.

Patra said that senior Congress leaders, including chief minister Gehlot, have claimed that these audio clips are authentic even though the FIR registered by the police rejects the authenticity.

“These are serious questions that we want to ask the Congress high command and Ashok Gehlot. Was phone tapping done? Assuming that you’ve tapped phones, was the SOP followed? Did the Congress government in Rajasthan use unconstitutional ways to save themselves when they found themselves cornered?” Patra asked at a press conference.

“People of Rajasthan want to know whether their privacy has been compromised,” he said, asking if phones of people related to politics are being tapped? Is it not a case of veiled emergency in Rajasthan?” he asked.

Patra demanded an immediate reaction from the state government and called for a CBI investigation into this “saga of illegalities and concocted lies”.

He cited regulations governing phone tapping to say that it can only be done by authorised agencies as per due process of law and subject to approved safeguards and a standard operating procedure (SOP).

Also read: When Entitled Dynasts Take on a Dynasty

Patra also insisted that the political crisis in Rajasthan is an outcome of a factional feud between Gehlot and rebel Congress leader Sachin Pilot and noted that the chief minister had said that he was not on “talking terms” with his deputy for 18 months.

The two groups had been fighting since the Congress won the assembly elections in the state in 2018 over who would become chief minister, the BJP spokesperson said.

They have been in a “cold war”, he said.

Scoffing at the Congress’s allegation that the BJP was behind the rebellion, Patra cited Gehlot’s recent digs at Pilot and said that the conspiracy grew within the state’s ruling party.

“The political drama unfolding in the Congress in Rajasthan is a cocktail of conspiracies, concocted stories, manufactured lies and illegalities…The sin was theirs. Conspiracies existed within the Congress,” he alleged.

The Congress has a history of “phone tapping and bugging”, Patra said and referred to a row involving Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram, both senior ministers in the erstwhile Congress-led UPA government, over alleged snooping.

However, the Congress said that BJP’s demand for a CBI probe into the audiotapes that showed a conspiracy to topple the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan “amounted to an admission of guilt” and it was now clear that the party was behind the rebellion by Sachin Pilot and others.

The Congress also mentioned that Pilot and other rebel MLAs are taking shelter in a hotel in the BJP-ruled Haryana to allege the saffron party’s involvement in “horse-trading”.

“We all witnessed over the last week the daylight murder of democracy being attempted by the BJP…everyday a new layer comes out exposing the direct links of the BJP in creating some kind of a crisis in Rajasthan…Their [BJP’s] only grievance is that when they were murdering democracy, why were they being recorded and if it was legal,” Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera told a virtual press conference in Delhi.

(With inputs from PTI)

Madhya Pradesh Scraps Notice on Sterilisation Targets for Health Workers

The circular asked MPHWs to get at least one man sterilised in the current financial year, or else their salaries would be withheld and they would be given compulsory retirement.

Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government on Friday scrapped a controversial circular that set sterilisation targets for male multi-purpose health workers (MPHWs) and warned of salary loss for not meeting goals.

The government also transferred Director of National Health Mission (NHM), Chhavi Bharadwaj, who had signed the circular.

The order issued by the government in the evening said Bharadwaj has been shifted to MP Mantralaya (Secretariat) as officer on special duty (OSD).

The circular asked MPHWs to get at least one man sterilised in the current financial year, which ends on March 31 or else their salaries would be withheld and they would be given compulsory retirement.

The BJP slammed the Kamal Nath government saying the circular reminded of the time of Emergency clamped in 1975- 1977, in which family planning was allegedly carried out forcibly.

As the order created a furore, Health Minister Tulsi Silawat announced its immediate withdrawal.

Also read: World Population Day: How Sterilisation Procedures Put Women at Risk

“I have just now nullified the NHMs order with immediate effect. The language in it was not proper,” Silawat told PTI in the afternoon.

Things should be done after proper reasoning, he said.

On February 11, the NHM shot off the circular marked Extremely Important. It asked top divisional officers and district officers, including those with the health department, to identify male workers with zero work output and apply the no work no pay principle if they don’t motivate at least one male vasectomy least this fiscal.

The move came after the National Family Health Survey- 4 report recorded that only 0.5% men were opting for sterilisation in Madhya Pradesh.

The circular, issued by the states NHM Mission Director, had said that MPHWs should mobilise at least five to 10 willing beneficiaries when camps are held in districts.

Former state chief minister and BJP vice president Shivraj Singh Chouhan criticised the government over the circular.

“MP has an undeclared emergency. Is this Emergency -2 of the Congress? If the efforts of the MPHWs are short, the government should take action, but the decision to withhold salary and retire if the goals are not met is dictatorial,” he tweeted.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra also said there was Emergency-like situation in the state.

How the BJP Spun a ‘Swastika’ out of a Nazi Symbol to Discredit Anti-CAA Protests

Republic TV broadcast an entire show claiming that the Hindu symbol was ‘abused’ by protestors at Shaheen Bagh.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra tweeted an anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) poster and claimed that it disrespects the Hindu symbol ‘Swastika’. “Hum dekhenge…so this is what the protestors in Shaheen Bagh want to show in the name of CAA protests. Destruction of holy symbols of Hindus. “Destruction of the holy Swastika”?? Off course they were the once in JNU who shouted, “There will be war till India is destroyed.” Wake up before it’s too late,” he tweeted. Patra’s tweet drew over 7,000 likes and more than 3,000 retweets in less than two hours.

[Translated from “हम देखेंगे” ..तो ये शाहीन बाग वाले CAA के Protest के नाम में दरअसल यही देखना चाहतें है .. हिंदुओं के पवित्र चीन्हों की बर्बादी ..”पवित्र स्वस्तिक” की बर्बादी?? Off course they were the once in JNU who shouted “भारत की बर्बादी तक जंग रहेगी जंग रहेगी” WAKE UP BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE]

Based on Patra’s tweet, Republic broadcast a show on January 16, also claiming that the Hindu symbol was ‘abused’ by protestors at Shaheen Bagh.

CNN News18’s Amish Devgan tweeted along similar lines saying, “स्वस्तिक का यह पोस्टर ग़लत है । (This poster of Swastika is wrong.)”

OpIndia wrote an impassioned article on the poster and claimed that the Shaheen Bagh protests promote ‘Islamist supremacy’ and ‘Hinduphobia’. The media outlet’s founder Rahul Roushan tweeted the poster and wrote, “Islam crushing Hinduism.”

Other usual suspects were Shefali Vaidya, Vivek Agnihotri and The Frustrated Indian.

A similar assertion was raised by CVoter founder, Yashwant Deshmukh and media outlet My Nation.

Nazi symbol, not the Hindu symbol ‘Swastika’ 

The symbol on the poster is not the ‘Swastika’ but the hooked-cross adopted by the Nazi Party. The most visible difference between the two is the absence of the four dots between the arms of the cross. Furthermore, the Nazi symbol is rotated at an angle of 45 degrees.

False claim viral

That the symbol on the poster represents the Hindu ‘Swastika’ is a false claim viral across social media platforms. One Rajan Thakur who identifies himself as a BJYM UP coordinator on Twitter shared the photograph with the exact words used by Sambit Patra.

Also read: Post CAA, BJP-Linked WhatsApp Groups Mount a Campaign to Foment Communalism

Another user Ajay Raghuwanshi whose Twitter bio reads ‘BJP social media’ also shared the image.

The claim is viral on Twitter and Facebook.

The article was originally published on Alt News. You can read it here.

Watch | Triple Talaq: What the Women of Rampur Think

Arfa Khanum Sherwani speaks to Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur Lok Sabha constituency about their views on Muslim personal law and the criminalisation of triple talaq.

Arfa Khanum Sherwani speaks to Muslim women in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur Lok Sabha constituency about their views on Muslim personal law and the criminalisation of triple talaq.

Triple Talaq: Will Scrap the Law If Voted to Power: Congress Women’s Wing Chief

Sushmita Dev said the BJP has pitted Muslim women against Muslim men through the triple talaq law.

New Delhi: The Congress will scrap the triple talaq law if it forms the government in 2019, the party’s women wing chief Sushmita Dev said on Thursday.

However, Congress’s chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said the party had made its stand clear even before the decision was made in the Supreme Court, that it is opposed to the practice.

“Triple talaq does not have a place in this modern society. We have said that when you send the husband to jail, who will pay for the maintenance of the family. The society and the parliament has to decide that. We want an amendment to include maintenance for the family,” he said.

But Dev, addressing the Congress’s minority department convention here, alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pitted Muslim women against Muslim men through the triple talaq law and that her party will “scrap this law” if voted to power.

“A lot of people told us that women will be empowered if the triple talaq Bill is passed. But we opposed the law because it is a weapon that Narendra Modi has prepared to put Muslim men in jail and make them stand in police stations,” the All India Mahila Congress chief said.

Also Read: On Triple Talaq: Patriarchy Is Not Just ‘Women’s Issues’, Marriage Is No Holy Cow

“The Congress party stood up and opposed it in parliament. I promise you people that the Congress government will come in 2019 and we will scrap this law. But it is also certain that whatever law is brought for women’s empowerment, by whichever government, the Congress will support it,” Dev said.

The BJP strongly reacted to Dev’s remarks, saying Muslim women and the people of India will not forgive the Congress for its “perverted mentality”. It accused the Congress of following the policy of appeasement.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra stated: “What kind of mentality is this? This is only to appease. The people of this country are looking. Neither Muslim women nor the people of this country will forgive Rahul Gandhi for this kind of perverted mentality.”

“Look at the audacity of Rahul Gandhi? His party…to appease says that if we come to power, we will not care about the Supreme Court (and) we will ban the ordinance, the law and the Bill that the prime minister is trying to bring in consonance to what the Supreme Court has said,” Patra said.

Under the proposed law, giving instant triple talaq will be illegal and void and will attract a jail term of three years for the husband.

The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2018 superseded an earlier Bill passed in Lok Sabha and pending in Rajya Sabha.

With the triple talaq Bill continuing to face resistance in Rajya Sabha, the Centre issued an ordinance in September last year, incorporating certain amendments.

The ordinance was re-promulgated last month as the first one was about to expire.

“Women should have right of life. Women should lead a life as anyone else in this beautiful country and beautiful democracy. This is why Supreme Court through a constitution bench struck down triple talaq,” Patra said.

The Centre maintains that despite the Supreme Court striking down the practice of talaq-e-biddat (instant triple talaq) as unconstitutional, men were divorcing their wives on flimsy grounds and even via WhatsApp.

Also Read: Triple Talaq: Why Just Muslims, Let’s Criminalise the Abandonment of All Wives

The opposition has said divorce cannot be made a penal offence and the provisions of the Bill are against basic principles of the Constitution.

CPI(M) senior leader Brinda Karat said the Congress is “confused” if it wants to amend or scrap the law. She said while the women’s wing chief said the party will scrap the law, the chief spokesperson said the party only wants to amend it. Karat said the Congress should first come to a consensus on what decision it wants to take.

“The law is discriminatory against Muslim men. There are laws to deal with desertion of wives. Those laws will suffice, there is no need to bring in another one,” she said. She instead suggested that people should be made aware of the existing laws.

Karat also said that the CPI(M) is opposed to the practice of triple talaq, but did not support the legislation put forth by the BJP-led NDA.

(With PTI inputs)

Robert Vadra Questioned by Enforcement Directorate for 5.5 Hours

It is for the first time that Vadra, is appearing before any probe agency in connection with criminal charges of allegedly dubious financial dealings.

New Delhi: Robert Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi and the husband of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, on Wednesday was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for about 5.5 hours in its money laundering probe into alleged possession of illegal foreign assets, days after he was directed by a city court to appear before the central probe agency.

Vadra’s wife, Priyanka Gandhi accompanied him in a white Toyota Land Cruiser and dropped him outside the ED’s office in Jamnagar House, a move seen as sending a political message to Congress’s opponents ahead of Lok Sabha polls.

Vadra left the office at about 9:40 pm alone in the same car in which Priyanka had dropped him.

His lawyer said Vadra has replied to every question that was put to him.

“All charges against him are wrong. We will cooperate with the agency 100%. He will come whenever he is called,” Suman Jyoti Khaitan, his lawyer told the media persons waiting outside the ED office.

Officials said Vadra has been called again on Thursday.

Priyanka, shortly after dropping her husband, took charge as All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh east, after her formal induction into the Congress party on January 23.

“He is my husband, he is my family…I support my family,” Priyanka said in support to Vadra, who returned from London earlier in the day.

Priyanka was asked by newsmen at the AICC headquarters, whether she was sending any message by dropping her husband at the ED office.

Asked if it was a political vendetta, she said everyone knows why this is being done.

On the day of Priyanka’s appointment, Vadra had sent an emotional message to her. “Congratulations P… always by your side in every phase of your life. Give it your best,” Vadra had written in a Facebook post.

It is for the first time that Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, is appearing before any probe agency in connection with alleged criminal charges of dubious financial dealings.

After wading through a posse of assembled media persons, Vadra entered the ED office at around 3:47 pm, minutes after a team of his lawyers reached the premises. He then signed the attendance register before being taken in for questioning.

Vadra has denied allegations of possessing illegal foreign assets and termed them a political witch hunt against him. He has alleged he was being ‘hounded and harassed’ to subserve political ends.

Ahead of the questioning by a team of three ED officials, official sources said Vadra was put through a dozen questions on transactions, purchase and possession of certain immovable assets in London and his statement was recorded under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

It is understood he was also grilled about his links with absconding and controversial defence dealer, Sanjay Bhandari and Bhandari’s relative Sumit Chhadha, in connection with certain e-mails recovered by agencies linked to the renovation of a London-based property.

Vadra was directed by a Delhi court on February 2, to cooperate with the probe being carried out by ED after he knocked at its door seeking anticipatory bail in the money laundering case.

The court directed him to appear before ED on Wednesday on his return from London.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seized on the questioning of Vadra to attack the Congress and alleged he got kickbacks from a petroleum and defence deals which took place during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra alleged at a news conference that Vadra bought eight to nine properties in London from the money he got as kickbacks from a petroleum and a defence deal, which took place in 2008-09. Patra did not provide any evidence to back his claim.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi claimed the charges against Vadra are “fickle, superficial, non-existent, non-substantive”.

The BJP had full four and a half years to investigate but could not find anything, he claimed at a news conference.

The attempt is to mislead, confuse and to create an ambience before the election, but people see through this, he said.

The ED case against Vadra relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property located at 12, Bryanston Square worth 1.9 million GBP (British pounds), which is allegedly owned by him.

The agency had also told the court that it has received information about various new properties in London which belongs to Vadra, including two houses of five and four million each, six other flats and more properties.

The ED had carried out raids in the case in December last year and grilled his aide Manoj Arora, an employee of a firm linked to Vadra, Skylight Hospitality LLP.

The agency had told the court that it filed a PMLA case against Arora, after his role cropped up during the probe of another case by the Income Tax Department under the 2015 anti-black money legislation against absconding Bhandari.

It had alleged that the London-based property was bought by Bhandari for GBP 1.9 million and sold in 2010 for the same amount despite incurring additional expenses of approximately GBP 65,900 on its renovation.

“This gives credence to the fact that Bhandari was not the actual owner of the property but it was beneficially owned by Vadra who was incurring expenditure on the renovation of this property,” the ED had claimed before the court.

Arora was a key person in the case and he was aware of Vadra’s overseas undeclared assets, ED had alleged.