Mr. Pawan Kumar Bansal, the Congress candidate for forthcoming Lok Sabha elections from city today categorically said, a sustained mendacious campaign of calumny has been going on against him, wholly ignoring the facts, while referring to the railgate case.
This was Mr. Bansal’s first media interaction after 10 months, ever since the controversy had broken out, which he said was a handiwork of the BJP. The facts of the case were also given to the media which brought out that all allegations against Mr. Bansal were false and contrary to facts.
Briefing the media persons at Rajiv Gandhi Congress Bhawan in Sector 35 here, Mr. Bansal said during their two-month long intensive investigation in May and June last year, CBI could not find even an iota of evidence against him, and accordingly his name was not included in the charge sheet and has rather been cited as prosecution witness. The Special CBI Court took cognizance of the same as such, he added.
Mr. Bansal said, “Initially without awaiting the due process, kangaroo courts were set up by some people with vested interest and judgment of presumptive guilt pronounced. Unfortunately, the same slanderous campaign has been started again betraying utter disrespect for even the judicial pronouncement”.
He said in November last year an NGO had filed an application before the CBI court alleging that Mr. Bansal had been wrongly let off and sought a direction to CBI to reinvestigate the case. However the CBI court on March 10 found the application devoid of merit and dismissed the same.
Mr. Bansal said he had got acclaim for his budget speech as the railway minister last year, but later faced defamation for no reason. “It hurts badly when you are victimized for no fault of yours even if facts are made clear later, and I lived with that trauma for last 10 months, but it’s because I had the support of my well-wishers and I came out clean that the party high command reposing faith in me, gave me party ticket for the forthcoming elections”.
The party candidate said Congress will go to the people with issues, not allegations. “It’s for people to see what we have done for the city, its colonies and villages in the last five years”, said a confident Mr. Bansal, listing out several developmental works in health, education and city infrastructure, which he said would help him have a comfortable victory yet again.
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