New Delhi, April 17 -- Union minister and senior BJP leader Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday made scathing allegations against the Congress party, claiming that its leadership misused public properties under the pretext of running the National Herald newspaper, and instead turned it into a massive real estate venture.

Addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters, Puri said the Congress party's involvement in the National Herald case is a "shut-and-closed case" of fraud, corruption, and money laundering.

He accused top Congress leaders of acquiring public properties worth over Rs 2,000 crore-some estimates put it closer to Rs 5,000 crore-through a series of transactions involving Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and Young Indian Pvt. Ltd.

The Union minister alleged that AJL, which was allotted land on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in 1963 at highly subsidised rates-Rs 1.25 lakh per acre-was supposed to use it for press and office purposes.

However, a 2016 probe revealed that no printing press ever operated in the building. Instead, the premises were leased out commercially-its basement was vacant, while the ground and first floors were rented to the Passport Office and the upper floors to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), generating substantial rental income.

Puri claimed that in November 2010, the Gandhi family floated Young Indian as a Section 25 (now Section 8) non-profit company

and paid only Rs 50 lakh to take over a Rs 90 crore loan owed by AJL.

"In exchange, they gained control of properties worth thousands of crores. This is not charity; it's real estate manipulation," he asserted.

Referring to the judicial proceedings, Puri stated that the Metropolitan Magistrate in 2014 had remarked: "It appears that Young Indian Limited was created with the intent of converting public money to personal use."

He further said that the Congress leadership had been attempting to delay the case through legal tactics since its inception in 2012-13-well before the BJP came to power at the Centre.

"Congress workers should ask their leadership-what steps were taken to keep the National Herald alive? The paper shut down in 2008. What efforts did leaders like Mallikarjun Kharge make to revive it?" Puri questioned.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.