NEW DELHI: Dismissing Congress’s charge of vendetta after Enforcement Directorate (ED) chargesheeted Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case, BJP on Wednesday said no one had the “licence to loot”.
Senior party functionary Ravi Shankar Prasad said the law would take its own course under the Modi govt and probe agencies would not be fazed by the Congress’s “threats”.
Prasad asked Congress to reply to the allegations against the Gandhis instead of offering a political reaction, noting that the opposition party found no relief from the judiciary in its pleas against the investigation.
He said the main charge against the Gandhis was that as 76% shareholders of Young Indian company, they had “misappropriated” real-estate worth thousands of crores owned by Associated Journals Limited, which owned the National Herald newspaper.
Prasad said Congress had the right to hold ‘dharnas’ (to protest the ED chargesheet) but that right did not extend to misappropriating public property given by the govt to National Herald.
“A newspaper that was established during the freedom struggle to espouse the voice of those fighting British imperialism degenerated into a money-minting exercise for Congress establishment,” he claimed.
Prasad said this was the “Gandhi model of development”, as he noted the allegation against Sonia’s son-in-law Robert Vadra of pocketing a huge profit in a land deal in Haryana with the collusion of the then Congress govt in the state.
BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said there was no question of vendetta politics as the probe began on Delhi high court’s directive in 2013 when the Congress-led UPA was in office at the Centre. “If they are calling it vindictive politics, they are admitting that they took some wrong action against us when they were in power,” Trivedi told media reporters.