Led by Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the party workers assembled at the state Congress headquarters in Sector 9 and began a march towards the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office located nearby.
However, police put up barricades near the Congress office, which prevented them from proceeding further. Some Congress leaders and workers were also briefly detained by the police, officials said.
The other Congress leaders who took part in the protest included MPs Deepender Singh Hooda and Varun Chaudhary, and Haryana MLAs Raghuvir Singh Kadian, Aftab Ahmed, Aditya Surjewala, Geeta Bhukkal, Kuldeep Vats, Jassi Petwar and Vikas Saharan.
Speaking to reporters, Bhupinder Hooda termed the chargesheet against party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi “vendetta politics”.
“Where is money laundering involved in the case? We will fight it in courts and raise the issue from the streets to Parliament,” he said.
Senior Congress leader and Nuh MLA Aftab Ahmed accused the Centre of misusing agencies such as the ED and the CBI against its political opponents.
“Whenever they (BJP) are under pressure, they misuse the probe agencies against their political opponents. They are feeling the pressure as Rahul Gandhi is touring Gujarat.
“They don’t allow Rahul Gandhi to speak in the Lok Sabha. And when he speaks outside, they put ED and other agencies behind him, thinking that they can suppress his voice. But this government does not know that they cannot suppress the voice of Congress,” Ahmed said.
Congress general secretary and Sirsa MP Kumari Selja said in a statement that “whenever someone raises their voice against the Centre or wants to bring the truth before the country, their voice is suppressed”.
“Whenever Rahul Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi tries to bring out the truth, the BJP government uses the ED as a weapon to suppress them. But the BJP forgets that the Congress has never bowed before anyone, nor will it ever,” Selja said.
“The BJP does not like Rahul Gandhi visiting the poor, standing with the unemployed, or raising public issues. Every Congress worker will continue the fight against this dictatorial government,” Selja said.
The ED on Tuesday said it filed a chargesheet in a money laundering case connected to the National Herald newspaper on April 9.
The chargesheet named Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, along with senior Congress leaders Sam Pitroda and Suman Dubey, as co-accused in the case.
The Congress described the ED chargesheet against its leaders as a case of vendetta politics, claiming that seizing of assets in the case was a “state-sponsored crime masquerading as the rule of law”. PTI SUN ARI
