Hours after the Delhi police booked Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others in connection with the long-running National Herald dispute, the Congress accused the BJP of striking at the party’s core to silence the Opposition during the winter session.
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah called the move nothing but an attempt to settle scores.
“It is being done politically. BJP is trying to take political revenge,” he said, accusing the Centre of turning investigative agencies into tools of political punishment.
Deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar argued that the National Herald’s assets were not personal property but part of the party’s legacy since the Nehru era.
“There was no need to harass,” he said. “It (National Herald) is not Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi's property. Young India or National Herald belongs to a political party.”
Shivakumar framed the move as a part of a larger political design, invoking the pressures on Rahul Gandhi. “It is jealousy, Rahul Gandhi never cares for such things. Even if you put him in jail, he won't care,” he said.
Senior leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi called the case an invention rooted in political hostility rather than material evidence.
“This is a bizarre situation. No crime, no cash, no trail to find. If justice is blind, then ED is colour blind. It only sees one colour, the Opposition colour,” he said.
For Singhvi, the entire affair amounts to “fiction” given an official stamp. “This is not the National Herald Case, this is the National Harassment case.”
Manickam Tagore framed the FIR as a ploy to disrupt Parliament. He said the government wanted to divert attention from issues the Opposition plans to raise in the winter session.
“We are very clear that this is a diversionary tactic and a political vendetta during the winter session; they don't want the parliament to function,” he said.
Karti Chidambaram, too, pointed at timing. With the session underway, he said the government was using the FIR to choke Opposition space.
Udit Raj linked the FIR to the early years of the freedom struggle, drawing a parallel between the imprisonment of national leaders then and the actions he believes are happening again, this time through agencies.
“The way Nehru and Gandhi were put in jail, I see that the same era is returning,” he said.
He defended the Congress’ financial role, saying the loan given to National Herald was used only for salaries, pensions and allowances. “They are being harassed, and this is a bogus case.”
Randeep Singh Surjewala took aim at what he called a “repeat FIR”, describing it as an attempt to fill the gaps in the earlier complaint.
“The ‘repeat False FIR’… is an admission that the ‘first FIR’… suffers from fatal lacunae and will fall flat,” he said. He insisted that National Herald is a not-for-profit entity from which “no one can withdraw a penny”.
