Graft vs vendetta: BJP, Cong face off over ED action against Gandhis

The action of the Enforcement Directorate against the Gandhis in the National Herald case kicked up a political storm today with the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress mounting counter-narratives to make their respective points.

While the BJP, led by former minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, framed the issue as an alleged “corporate conspiracy by the Gandhis to grab public assets”, Congress veterans Jairam Ramesh and Abhishek Singhvi called the ED action a “political vendetta meant to digress from government failures”.

At the heart of the matter is Subramanian Swamy’s private complaint that the Gandhis used Congress funds to take over Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), publishers of the National Herald newspaper, and later illegally acquired AJL assets worth thousands of crores.

The Congress argues that as part of its commitment to legacy newspaper National Herald, associated with freedom fighters, it loaned Rs 90 crore to bail out the AJL, which failed to pay back. So in 2010, the AJL swapped its debt for equity and assigned its nine crore shares to a not-for-profit firm Young Indian, where Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi owned 38 per cent shares each and other Congress leaders the rest.

“Everyone must learn from the Gandhi model of development….In business, the Gandhis are unmatched. By writing off Rs 90 crore in outstanding loans for just Rs 50 lakh, they got AJL property worth thousands of crores transferred to their names,” Prasad alleged.

The BJP leader accused the Congress of handing over entire AJL assets — prime real estate given by the government across major cities — to one family through a corporate conspiracy, turning the AJL into private business and a personal “ATM for the Gandhis”.

Prasad also referred to how Sardar Patel in a May 3, 1950, letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, objected to the involvement of government-linked individuals in the National Herald affairs and Nehru responded saying investment in Herald was a profitable venture.

After the BJP questioned the Congress for making the AJL debt write-off sound like an act to save a publication associated with freedom fighters, Jairam and Singhvi said two people had unleashed a deliberate politics of vendetta against the Gandhis to muzzle the Opposition’s voice.

“Effort is underway to deflect attention from burning issues, foreign policy and economic crisis. Two people are masterminds of this politics of vendetta but we won’t be silenced. Whatever the Prime Minister and the Home Minister do, we will not be silent. We will keep speaking up for the people,” Jairam said while Singhvi asked where the proceeds of the crime were. “Selective justice is nothing but political thuggery”, the ace lawyer added as the Congress protested the ED action with sit-in protests across state capitals.

The political slugfest followed the ED filing a chargesheet against Sonia and Rahul in a special court on Tuesday, accusing them and other Congress men, including Sam Pitroda and Sonia’s friend Suman Dubey, of alleged money laundering.

The ED had begun probing the matter in 2021 after the complaint of BJP’s Swamy in the matter.

National Herald had ceased publication in 2008 with the BJP today asking how a legacy newspaper initiated by Nehru was allowed to fall by the wayside during the reign of the Congress-led UPA.

“At a time when multiple media channels are thriving, it beats common sense to imagine that National Herald would shut shop despite Congress patronage. This raises question marks about the Congress’ intentions regarding this newspaper,” said Prasad.

He said the newspaper began with 5,000 stakeholders, mostly freedom fighters, but morphed into a “family enterprise”.

“Sardar Patel and then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Chandrabhanu Gupta both objected to this,” Prasad noted with Trivedi adding: “On the lines of Waqf-al-aulad, the Congress converted properties of freedom fighters into ‘property al-aulad’, transferring them to its heirs.”

Jairam, however, trashed all accusations and said the Congress leadership, especially Sonia and Rahul, had been deliberately targeted.

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