INC means 'I Need Corruption': BJP's Shehzad Poonawalla attacks Congress after Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury's controversial interview

New Delhi [India], May 12 (ANI): BJP on Sunday accused the Congress of indulging in extortion after the Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said in an interview that if the industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani gave money to the party they would stop speaking against them.
"Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has cleared everyone's doubts about Congress' corruption and money racket model. He has openly said that if they receive money bags, they keep quiet about any issue in Parliament and if they do not get money, they create a ruckus," Shehzad Poonawalla, BJP national spokesperson said.
"He even gave an example that if the groups they are targeting, give them money, they become quiet. Now going back to Rahul Gandhi's speeches, he has stopped taking the names of the two people he often mentioned," he added.
Poonawalla made a swipe at Congress by expanding the party's acronym, INC, as "I Need Corruption".
"During the UPA rule, Congress has earned Rs 12 lakh crores by doing all this... INC means 'I Need Corruption', and this is an open game of political extortion. Whatever they say inside or outside Parliament is just for money," he said.
Poonawalla shared in his X account a 39-second video clip of the interview of Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury in which he was heard saying, " If Adani sends me a bag of money, that will be enough for me." Then the reporter asks "But you speak against them (Adani and Ambani) in Parliament". To this, the Congress leader replies "Yes, I do because they don't send us money. If they send, people become silent."
In an interview to an online portal, Adhir Ranjan also said that he is a BPL (below poverty line) person and that it has become very difficult for someone like him to contest an election nowadays.
Adhir Ranjan is the Congress candidate from the Behrampur Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal, the constituency he has been representing in parliament since 1999.
Earlier this month in an election rally in Telangana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked why Rahul Gandhi stopped naming Adani and Ambani in the election campaigning and whether tempo-loads of money have reached the Congress.
Countering the claim, Rahul Gandhi asked the Prime Minister how he knew the money came in a tempo and why he was not ordering an ED probe into that. (ANI)