The Indian Youth Congress (IYC) upped the ante against External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj with scores of its activists descending outside her residence to demand her resignation over allegations of favouring former IPL honcho Lalit Modi on Monday.
Ms. Swaraj triggered a controversy after she defended her recommendation to the U.K. last year to provide travel documents to Mr. Modi to visit his wife, who is undergoing cancer treatment in Portugal.
Alleging that favouring the corrupt had come to underline the Narendra Modi government’s foreign policy, IYC president Amrinder Singh Raja said Ms. Swaraj should tender her resignation because she had misused a public office to extend personal benefits to the former Indian Premier League (IPL) Commissioner.
“This is not the first time that her name has figured in such an instance. She had extended similar benefits to the Reddy brothers accused in the mining scam,” Delhi Youth Congress president Amit Malik added.
The local police confronted and detained a majority of these activists under the Delhi Police Act before allowing them to leave later in the day.
Meanwhile, Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken alleged that the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) was sealing shops in an old market like Shahdara in the name of conversion charges, which was both unethical and illegal.
Mr. Maken was addressing the shopkeepers during a demonstration against the EDMC, organised at Azad Mandi in Shahdara. Former area MLA Narendra Nath and EDMC Opposition leader Varyam Kaur were also present.
“The Corporation has no business to impose conversion charges on markets that were established before 1962 and declared commercial areas. These have been waived on old city markets like Shahdara, Chandni Chowk, Nai Sarak and Paharganj in the 2021 Master Plan as well,” Mr. Maken said.
According to him, the move to seal these markets by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led municipal corporations was totally illegal and reeked of high-handedness.
