After a day of confusion, the Congress swung into action to defend former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been served with a summons as accused by a CBI court in the multi-crore coal scam case.
A meeting of the party leadership decided to support Singh with legal aid and fight the case legally to prove his innocence in court.
Leading from the front, Congress president Sonia Gandhi held a solidarity march along with the party’s MPs and top leaders to Singh’s residence on Thursday.
Terming the summons “outrageous”, Sonia said the party is convinced that Singh will prove his innocence. Party leader and senior advocate Kapil Sibal is helping Singh to fight the case in the CBI court.
Apart from Sibal, former ministers P Chidambaram, Anand Sharma, Ambika Soni and Veerappa Moily also participated in the solidarity march.
No legal groundThe party’s legal hands maintained that there was no ground to take legal action against Singh since the CBI found no criminal involvement in the issue.
The Congress also attacked the Modi government for its silence on the issue despite a clear stand by the CBI in the court that there is no evidence against Singh in the allocation of Talabira coal blocks II to Hindalco.
“I was outraged at the news that summons had been served to Manmohan Singh,” Sonia told reporters after the march.
She said Singh is known not only in our country but throughout the world as being a person of integrity and probity.
“We are here to offer our unstinted support, our solidarity. The Congress party is fully behind him. We shall fight this legally and with all our means at our command. We are sure, we are convinced that he will be vindicated,” she added.
Singh thanked the Congress leadership for the support. “The Congress party, Sonia ji and all members of the working committee and senior leaders have come to my residence, expressed solidarity with me and that we will fight this case to the best of our ability,” he said.