New Delhi, April 5 The BJP on Sunday accused the Congress of using "fabricated" documents and "concocted stories" to level "baseless" allegations against Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma's wife, saying the main opposition party has stooped to such "reprehensible and despicable" acts, sensing its defeat in the state assembly polls.
This came after the Congress alleged that the Assam chief minister's wife possesses passports of three countries and that he concealed information about her properties.
Targeting Sarma as the campaign peaks for the April 9 election in Assam, Congress' media and publicity department head Pawan Khera showed, at a press conference, purported documents to support the allegations and demanded that the Election Commission cancel his nomination for allegedly concealing information in his poll affidavit.
Dismissing Khera's allegations, BJP national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said, "This is a desperate and flustered attempt to alter the trajectory of an impending defeat by presenting fanciful and concocted stories at the very peak of the election season."
The Congress has engaged in an "utterly reprehensible and despicable act" by making a "completely baseless" allegation against the Assam chief minister's wife using "fabricated documents", the BJP Rajya Sabha MP charged.
"It's extremely condemnable," he said at a press conference at the BJP headquarters here.
Trivedi claimed that the documents shown by Khera had many discrepancies, including the wrong spelling of surname and the UIDAI number of his wife.
"The name of the company they referred to was established on April 3, about 36 hours back. The QR of the deed doesn't match with any record," he said, showing some documents at the press conference.
Khera alleged that Sarma's wife owns a company based in Wyoming, USA and that the list of the members for this company includes the names of the couple and their son.
Terming the allegations as "malicious, fabricated and politically motivated", Sarma said that as Assam moves decisively towards a historic mandate, such desperate and baseless attacks only expose the Congress' sinking ground.
"These are malicious, fabricated, and politically motivated lies aimed at misleading the people of Assam," the Assam Chief Minister said.
He alleged that "documents being circulated show multiple glaring inconsistencies, suggesting a crude and poorly executed attempt at digital manipulation".
Sarma said his wife and he will be filing both criminal and civil defamation cases within the next 48 hours against Khera for making "reckless and defamatory statements".