Delhi HC rejects Rahul, Sonia Gandhi's plea against tax reassessments

In a setback to Congress president 

Rahul Gandhi

 and his mother 

Sonia Gandhi

, the Delhi high court on Monday justified re-opening of their tax assessments for 2011-12 relating to Associated Journals Ltd, the publisher of 

National Herald

.

Dismissing their petitions challenging the move, a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and AK Chawla said the Gandhis and Congress leader Oscar Fernandes had "the primary obligation to disclose the acquisition of shares" in Young Indian (YI). The rejection of the pleas of the Congress leaders will pave the way for the I-T department to scrutinise records for assessment year 2011-12.

The I-T's demand for reopening of tax returns of senior Congress leaders, including Motilal Vora, is based on its previous assessment order, passed on YI in December 2017, where it has accused them of having "devised the scheme involving pre-ordinate artificial and fraudulent steps to take over AJL". The tax demand was imposed on YI after the department cancelled the tax exemption of the company - which had shown nil income for 2010-11 - as it had been found engaged in activities which were noncharitable in nature, according to the order.