Though it’s come a bit late, we finally have the defence in the National Herald case being laid out. At the moment it is still not a defence that has been formally presented in court even at this pre-pre-trial phase, but we can see the elements and glimpses of what’s going to be the response to the complaint that was filed by Dr Subramanian Swamy and others before the Magistrate, and on the basis of which a summons was issued to the accused. The Congress Party’s defence in the National Herald case for the purposes of this article has been culled out from an FAQ circulated by Jairam Ramesh, the tweets of the Congress party account on twitter and the version put out by its spokespersons such as P Chidambaram.
Straight up it’s clear that there is no divergence on the main events between the parties. There is agreement on the following points:
1. Unsecured loans amounting to Rs. 90 crore were given by the Congress party to Associated Journals Limited.
2. AJL was not able to repay the loans to the Congress party as it had shut down its newspaper operations.
3. The loans were assigned by the Congress party to Young India, a Section 25 company (a not for profit company) for a sum of Rs. 50 lakhs.
4. The directors of Young India were Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi who held 76% of the shareholding of Young India, along with Motilal Vora and Oscar Fernandes who held the rest.