Chidambaram hits out at BJP over rural jobs bill, calls National Herald case ‘fabricated’

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram has launched a sharp attack on the BJP-led government over the proposed Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, while also dismissing the National Herald case as politically motivated and legally flawed.

Addressing a press conference in Chennai, the former Union finance minister criticised the proposed legislation, which seeks to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Chidambaram said removing Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the rural employment programme amounted to what he described as the “second killing of Mahatma Gandhi”.

“He was killed once on January 30, 1948, and now they have killed him again,” he said, alleging that the bill, introduced in Parliament in December 2025, was a deliberate attempt by the Bharatiya Janata Party to erase Gandhi’s identity and legacy from public policy.

Separately, addressing a press conference at Satyamurthy Bhavan in Chennai on Sunday, Chidambaram termed the National Herald matter a “fabricated” and politically driven case. He accused the Enforcement Directorate of committing serious legal errors and engaging in unlawful actions.

Questioning the basis of the money-laundering allegations, he said it was impossible to determine the legality of a transaction in the absence of any money trail. “When there is no money transaction at all, how can anyone say it is legal or illegal?” he asked, adding that any appeal by the government would reflect a “lack of wisdom”.

The remarks came after the Enforcement Directorate moved the Delhi High Court challenging an order of the Rouse Avenue Court, which had declined to take cognisance of the agency’s prosecution complaint against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case.

In a detailed order earlier this week, Special Judge Vishal Gogne ruled that a money-laundering prosecution under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) could not be sustained without a first information report in the scheduled or predicate offence. The court held that the ED’s case, which was based on a private complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and a summoning order issued in 2014, was legally unsustainable.

The court observed that an FIR has a far greater investigative scope than a private complaint and is a foundational requirement for the ED to initiate proceedings, register an enforcement case information report (ECIR) and file a prosecution complaint. While declining to take cognisance, the court clarified that it was not examining the merits of the allegations.

It also noted that a subsequent FIR had been registered by Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing in October 2025 and said both the ED and the EOW were free to continue investigations in accordance with the law. However, the prosecution complaint in its present form was held to be legally untenable.

Chidambaram said the developments exposed what he described as the misuse of investigative agencies for political purposes, even as the Congress vowed to continue opposing both the proposed rural employment bill and the pursuit of the National Herald case.

With agency inputs