Congress today put its weight behind party leader P Chidambaram, saying the CBI raids against him and his son in connection with an 11-year-old case are “wrong” and aimed at diverting attention from the key issues of inflation and unemployment.<\/p>\n
The party also said P Chidambaram is a nationalist and patriot whose commitment to the country is beyond question.<\/p>\n
The CBI registered a fresh case against Lok Sabha MP Karti Chidambaram to probe the allegation of facilitating visas of 250 Chinese nationals in lieu of Rs 50 lakh when his father P Chidambaram was Union home minister.<\/p>\n
The agency also conducted coordinated searches at 10 locations in multiple cities including the Chidambarams’ residences in Chennai and Delhi.<\/p>\n
Senior Congress spokesperson Ajay Maken told reporters at a press conference here that the “raids were wrong”.<\/p>\n
“The Congress party stands behind P Chidambaram. This is being done to divert the attention of people from the issue of rising inflation and unemployment,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
“The issue is being raised 12 years later and Chidambaram has also raised questions on the timings of the raids,” Maken said.<\/p>\n
Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, “Mr P Chidambaram is a nationalist and a patriot, whose commitment to the country is unquestionable.”<\/p>\n
“To plant source-based preposterous allegations against a former Home Minister and Finance Minister by CBI reflects the lowest ebb in political discourse,” Surjewala said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Chidambaram has also raised questions over the timing of the raids which were conducted on charges dating back 11 years. He said a CBI team searched his residence in Chennai as well as his official residence in Delhi but “found nothing and seized nothing”.<\/p>\n
“The team showed me an FIR in which I am not named as an accused. The search team found nothing and seized nothing,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I may point out that the timing of the search is interesting,” he added.<\/p>\n
The searches are being conducted at three locations in Chennai, three in Mumbai and one each in Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab and Odisha.<\/p>\n
“I have lost count, how many times has it been? Must be a record,” Karti tweeted immediately after the CBI raids, without specifying much.<\/p>\n
Later, he tweeted, “My office has just updated on the ‘record’ twice in 2015, once in 2017, twice in 2018 and today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Congress today put its weight behind party leader P Chidambaram, saying the CBI raids against him and his son in connection with an 11-year-old case are “wrong” and aimed at diverting attention from the key issues of inflation and unemployment. The party also said P Chidambaram is a nationalist and patriot whose commitment to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":337582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337583,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337581\/revisions\/337583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/337582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}