House panel summons Rajnath

Former BJP president Rajnath Singh has been summoned by the Privileges Committee of Lok Sabha for targeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the alleged forcible land acquisition by the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust in Gurgaon district of Haryana. Aurangzeb Naqshbandi reports.

Former BJP president Rajnath Singh has been summoned by the Privileges Committee of Lok Sabha for targeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the alleged forcible land acquisition by the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust in Gurgaon district of Haryana.

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Singh has been asked to appear on May 21. The trust is headed by Gandhi and has Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as its members.

The allotment had kicked off a row after Singh alleged that the trust had acquired land by forcibly taking the signatures of farmers in Ullahawas village in Gurgaon. He also demanded a judicial probe into it.

Taking strong exception to the allegations, Congress MP Meenakshi Natarajan gave a privilege notice against the BJP leader on August 19, 2011.

In her notice, Natarajan, a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, termed Singh’s allegations as “false, baseless and mendacious”. She had appeared before the panel in November last year. The 15-member panel, headed by Congress MP PC Chacko, also comprises three BJP MPs Ananth Kumar, Gopinath Munde and Shahnawaz Hussain.

The BJP had also raised the issue in the monsoon session of parliament last year, alleging that rules were bent to acquire the land by the trust. It demanded cancellation of allotment.

The government defended the allotment, saying it was done with the “full consent” of the village panchayat which had unanimously passed a resolution to lease the land for 33 years.