"To Save Rs 2,000 Crore": Smriti Irani Slams Gandhis For Protest Call

"Congress leaders have taken to the streets to pressurise an investigating agency openly because their corruption has been exposed," she said.

The Congress is not protesting to save democracy, but to save Rahul Gandhi's properties worth Rs 2,000 crore, Union Minister Smriti Irani said today on the massive protests in support of Rahul Gandhi as he reached the office of the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a money laundering case. She said the protests are an attempt to pressurise investigating agencies and that never before has a political family attempted to hold investigative agencies to ransom to protect "ill-gotten wealth". 

"Congress leaders have taken to the streets to pressurise an investigating agency openly because their corruption has been exposed," she said. She asserted that nobody is above the law, "not even Rahul Gandhi".

Explaining the ED's case to the media, the Minister said a company called Associated Journals Limited (AJL) was founded in 1930 with the purpose of publishing a newspaper. It had 5,000 freedom fighters as shareholders but is now under the Gandhi family's control, she said.

She alleged that the ownership of the company was transferred to one family so that it doesn't publish newspapers but become a real estate business instead.