BJP’s Anurag Thakur targets Congress over National Herald case, calls paper an ‘ATM’ for party

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Anurag Thakur on Friday launched a fresh offensive against the Congress in the ongoing National Herald money laundering case, targeting senior party leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, who have been named in a recent chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

Thakur questioned the Congress’s decision to set up Young Indian (YI), a company in which the Gandhis hold a 76% stake, for the debt mitigation of Associated Journals Limited (AJL), instead of paying off the dues directly.

“If Congress wanted to waive loans, why did it not do so for AJL? YI was formed and one family holds 76% 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,” Thakur said at a press conference held at the BJP headquarters in Delhi.

Reiterating the Enforcement Directorate’s allegations, Thakur said, “ ₹2,000 crore worth of AJL’s property was transferred in the name of YI in exchange for ₹50 lakh. The remaining ₹89.50 crore (out of the ₹90 crore debt) was waived by Congress.” He further questioned, “Can a political party give a loan to a company? Is any interest charged on that loan?”

Taking a jibe at the publication, he said, “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.”

On April 9, the ED filed a chargesheet against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others in its money laundering probe into the financial affairs of the Congress-linked newspaper. The agency alleged that YI, owned primarily by the Gandhis, acquired AJL’s assets, valued at ₹2,000 crore, for just ₹50 lakh. According to the ED, the present market value of these assets stands at ₹5,000 crore.

Congress, in response on April 16, dismissed the allegations as “fake,” denying claims that AJL was improperly acquired by YI or that the Gandhis had made profits or mismanaged funds.

“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.

He alleged that the National Herald had become an “ATM” for the Congress and cited advertisement payouts worth crores by the Congress-led Himachal Pradesh government between December 2022 and February 2025.

Thakur also condemned the defence by Himachal Pradesh chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, in which he said, “National Herald is our newspaper and we will keep giving advertisements to it.”

He also raised questions about the use of properties allotted at concessional rates to AJL. “Is their rent also fictitious, like the statistics of printing the newspaper?” he asked, demanding records on the number of advertisements published and the payments made to the newspaper.