National Herald case: Court reserves order on Motilal Vora's application

A Delhi court on Saturday reserved its order on an application moved by Congress leader Motilal Vora, seeking directions to restrain Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Subramanian Swamy from posting derogatory tweets regarding the National Herald case.

The court would pronounce order on the application on November 17. The rest part of the submission of evidence by Swamy will be recorded on the same date.

During the argument, Swamy said that he has every right to tweet but added he cannot remember the tweets of those cited by Vora. He also stated that the copies of tweets are not admissible under the law.

On September 10, the Delhi High Court rejected Congress president Rahul Gandhi and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi's plea challenging the Income Tax (IT) notice, seeking tax reassessment related to the National Herald and Young India transactions for the financial year 2011-2012.

The Congress president had earlier challenged the IT department's authority to reopen his tax assessment.

The National Herald scam is an ongoing case filed by Swamy against Sonia, Rahul, their company and four other persons including Vohra alleging that both Sonia and Rahul have grabbed land and committed fraud worth Rs.16 billion by acquiring a public limited company Associated Journals Limited (AJL), through their private company, Young Indian (YI).

In his complaint, Swamy also claimed that, through this fraud, they had got the publication rights of the National Herald newspaper, besides real estate properties.

He alleged that the acquired properties, which were given by the government only for the purposes of publishing newspapers, were used for running a passport office

Swamy, in his plea, also claimed that the Congress party granted an interest-free loan of Rs. 90.25 crore to AJL which was either not repaid or repaid in case, which was in violation of Section 269T of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

However, the Congress said that the loan was given only for reviving the National Herald newspaper with no commercial interest.

Swamy has named, Gandhis, Motilal Vora (AICC treasurer), Oscar Fernandes (AICC general secretary), Suman Dubey, Sam Pitroda and YI as an accused in his complaint.