The Congress party has launched a coordinated media offensive against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), aggressively dubbing Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) recent chargesheet against Congress as the BJP’s “vendetta politics”. The party has deployed 57 spokespersons to counter BJP narrative on National Herald case.
In press conferences from Vijayawada to Varanasi, Congress spokespersons, including Pawan Khera, Supriya Shrinate, and Avinash Pande, accused the BJP of using the ED as a political weapon to tarnish the legacy of the National Herald, a newspaper founded by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938.
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“The BJP is trying to kill a living monument of the freedom struggle,” Khera said in Delhi, labeling the case a “fabricated scam” to distract from economic failures.
“There is no transaction of money. Without money, there are no ‘proceeds of crime’. Without ‘proceeds of crime’, there is no money laundering. Without money laundering, the ED has no jurisdiction, P. Chidambaram said addressing a press conference at the Delhi Congress headquarters.
Posts on X further amplified the campaign, with hashtags like #FreedomIsInPeril trending as Congress supporters rallied online.
The BJP hit back dismissing the accusations, with spokesperson and MP Sambit Patra calling the Congress’s efforts “a desperate attempt to deflect from corruption".
Another BJP MP Bansuri Swaraj grabbed attention at the Parliament Annexe on Monday, arriving for a JPC meeting with a tote bag reading "National Herald Ki Loot" — a clear swipe at the Gandhis, echoing Priyanka Gandhi’s own statement bags which she displayed during the last parliament session.
Analysts see the Congress’s strategy as an attempt to regain narrative control ahead of state elections, leveraging its expanded spokesperson roster to counter the BJP’s media dominance. “This is Congress trying to fight BJP, which Congress on most of the occasions do not do. This was an aggressive step from the Congress," said a political analyst.
The move was announced on April 20, aiming to reshape the public narrative following the ED’s recent chargesheet against Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.
However, with BJP leaders like Anurag Thakur doubling down on corruption allegations, the battle for public perception is far from over.
The war of words between the Congress and the BJP is only set to escalate.
