'Congress Turned National Herald Into ATM': BJP's Anurag Thakur Targets Sonia, Rahul Gandhi
On April 9, the ED filed a chargesheet against Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and others, alleging that Young Indian, primarily owned by the Gandhis, acquired AJL’s assets.
BJP leader Anurag Thakur on Friday launched a scathing attack against the Congress over the ongoing National Herald money laundering case, indirectly targeting senior party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, who were recently named in a chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Hitting out at Gandhi indirectly, Thakur said, “The Congress has failed to launch repeatedly and take it among people, but it fails repeatedly.” “I am not referring to the person that you are reminded of by my statement. But I am here to talk about National Herald,” IANS quoted him as saying.
Thakur questioned why the Congress chose to establish Young Indian (YI), a firm in which the Gandhis hold a 76 per cent stake, to manage the debts of Associated Journals Limited (AJL), rather than settling the liabilities outright.
“If Congress wanted to waive loans, why did it not do so for AJL? YI was formed and one family holds 76 per cent of its control, therefore, the party waived the loans. If the 1,000 people (AJL’s shareholders) had the shares, their debts would have been waived,” Hindustan Times quoted Thakur as saying at a press conference held at Delhi's BJP headquarters.
Repeating the allegations of the Enforcement Directorate, Thakur said, “ Rs 2,000 crore worth of AJL’s property was transferred in the name of YI in exchange for Rs 50 lakh. The remaining Rs 89.50 crore (out of the Rs 90 crore debt) was waived by Congress.” Further questioning about the loan, he asked, “Can a political party give a loan to a company? Is any interest charged on that loan?”
Lashing out at the publication, he questioned on what basis a Congress-ruled state runs advertisements in the National Herald, which is a non-regular paper? “National Herald is a non-regular paper. A weekly paper… Some newspapers are printed on paper and others are not printed, distributed, seen, or read. The Congress-ruled states run advertisements in this paper, on what basis? The daily newspapers are paid in cents, whereas National Herald is given a silver coin," he said.
Congress Label ED's Chargesheet 'Fake'
In response, the Congress on April 16 rejected the allegations as “fake,” asserting that there was no wrongdoing in the acquisition of AJL by YI, nor any profit made or funds misused by the Gandhis. “ED’s chargesheet has made it clear the type, date, time, place and all the details of the crime along with the facts and figures. This is a Congress-model of corruption where a weekly newspaper is getting a much larger amount than the daily newspapers,” Thakur said.
Thakur accused the Congress of turning the National Herald into an “ATM” and pointed to advertisement payments worth crores allegedly made by the Congress-led Himachal Pradesh government between December 2022 and February 2025.
He also criticised Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s defense of the payments, quoting him as saying, “National Herald is our newspaper and we will keep giving advertisements to it.”
Furthermore, Thakur questioned the use of properties allocated to AJL at subsidised rates, asking whether the rent being paid was as fictitious as the reported circulation figures of the publication. He demanded transparency regarding the number of ads published and the payments issued to the newspaper.
On April 9, the ED filed a chargesheet against Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and others, alleging that YI, primarily owned by the Gandhis, acquired AJL’s assets, worth Rs 2,000 crore, for just Rs 50 lakh. The ED claimed that the current market value of these assets is around Rs 5,000 crore.
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