Herald case: BJP digs out Nehru-Patel's exchange to rebut Cong's charges

As the Congress party cries conspiracy over ED charge sheeting the Gandhis in National Herald case, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday sharpened its attack by digging out past conversations between Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, spotlighting how the latter voiced concern over its ‘funding’. 

BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi, addressing a press conference, put up written exchanges between India’s first PM, Nehru and Sardar Patel regarding the Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which controls the National Herald.

BJP MP said that Sardar Patel wrote to Pandit Nehru a couple of times, expressing concerns over its ‘funding by people in power’ and stating that it would ‘hurt its credibility’ but the latter didn’t pay heed and rather advised that there was ‘nothing wrong’ in receiving contributions from charitable funds.

Notably, the newspaper was founded before the country's Independence and served as the voice of freedom fighters.

Sudhanshu Trivedi also rejected Cong’s claims of a witch-hunt and an act of vendetta and rather questioned the grand old party’s intentions on the 'dubious' AJL deal, in which both ‘sellers and buyers’ belonged to the same entity.

He said that three newspapers, namely National Herald, Navjivan and Qaumi Awaz, were published by AJL, and if the party wanted, it could have kept them alive.

“Even after the party having stayed in power for 60 years, the Herald House closed down. It’s because the Congress leaders didn’t want the paper to survive,” he alleged.

Trivedi briefing the media over letters trail between the Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel, said, “On May 3, 1950, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel wrote - It is bound to subject ourselves to the criticism for a manner in which National Herald is securing assistance from the persons who are associated with the activities of government.”

“Nehru in his reply on May 5, 1950 wrote - We all, at times, receive contributions for charitable funds, should they be refused or accepted in certain circumstances?” he added.

He further informed that Patel again raised concerns over ‘non-charitable transactions’, but that too was dismissed by the then PM.

“Nehru said – As a matter of fact, Herald is a fairly good business proposition and its preference, shares, and debentures are not a bad investment,” the BJP MP said, quoting from his letter.

Trivedi also recalled a damning statement of Chandra Bhanu Gupta, a veteran Congress leader and four-time UP CM, who scoffed at the idea of ‘National Herald being considered as private property of Gandhi family’.