Explainer: Congress's campaign against NSA Ajit Doval, and how the BJP is hitting back

The Congress has sharpened its attacks on National Security Adviser Ajit Doval in recent weeks, weaving together several threads, from a surveillance charge to old offshore-fund allegations to a fresh comparison with the 1999 Kandahar hijacking. The BJP has hit back, accusing the party of undermining national security institutions. Here is a rundown of what has been said.

The video: Matthew VanDyke and a “second Kandahar”

The Congress’s Karnataka unit has posted a video online drawing a parallel between Doval’s role in the 1999 Kandahar hijacking, when he escorted militants including Masood Azhar to their release in Afghanistan, and the government’s more recent handling of the case of Matthew VanDyke, an American national. The video positions the two episodes side by side to suggest a pattern of the state buckling to pressure.

The comparison stems from the VanDyke case. He and six Ukrainian nationals were arrested by the NIA in March this year over an alleged terror-training case linked to Myanmar, and were initially investigated under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. After US Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised VanDyke’s detention with New Delhi, the UAPA charges were not pressed in the first chargesheet, and VanDyke was granted bail and returned to the United States after roughly six months in custody. The Congress called this a case of an accused “sent off to America as though he were a state guest,” with spokesperson Pawan Khera alleging the Prime Minister was “compromised” and under pressure from Washington. Congress MP Jairam Ramesh similarly questioned the circumstances of the release.

By invoking Kandahar, the video frames the VanDyke case as a second instance of India yielding to external pressure and letting an accused walk free, with Doval as the connecting figure between the two episodes, given his own account of the 1999 handover.

A more measured reading

Not everyone accepts that framing. Some commentary has argued that the comparison overstates the parallel, pointing out that the UAPA charges were never formally “dropped” so much as not invoked in the first chargesheet, and that an open case, a signed bond and diplomatic undertakings remain in place, giving Indian agencies a file they can act on again if needed. On this reading, the release is less a concession than a calculated trade-off, consistent with what these commentators describe as Doval’s longer-term approach to dealing with Washington, from Kandahar to the extradition of 26/11 accused Tahawwur Rana.

The surveillance claim

Separately, at his “Chhatron Ki Goonj” programme in Indore on September 19, Rahul Gandhi accused Doval of snooping on people’s phones and accessing their WhatsApp and Facebook communications. He described Doval as part of a six-member “system” controlling the country, alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, and industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani. “Doval ji is sitting inside this phone. Doval ji is sitting inside your phone,” he told students, without offering documentary evidence.

Older allegations revived

The Congress has also returned to older claims. In 2017, it alleged that Doval’s son Vivek opened a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands within days of demonetisation, and linked this to a subsequent spike in foreign investment from the jurisdiction, which it called “round-tripping” of money. It also questioned the India Foundation think tank, on whose board Doval’s other son Shaurya sits alongside Union ministers, alleging a potential conflict of interest and demanding a CBI inquiry, a demand that has not resulted in any confirmed action.

Separately, the party has cited a 2010 interview in which Doval, then a retired intelligence officer, was critical of the BJP government’s handling of the Kandahar hijacking, to argue that Doval himself had faulted the BJP’s response at the time, before he became NSA under a BJP government.

The Dhurandhar sidebar

Doval’s name has also become tangled up in the reception of Aditya Dhar’s 2025 film Dhurandhar, which some commentary suggested was loosely inspired by his career, a claim others dispute, pointing instead to slain Major Mohit Sharma as the likely inspiration. A separate, unrelated mix-up, over an executive producer credit in the film that happens to share Rahul Gandhi’s name, added to the online confusion but has no substantive bearing on the political dispute.

The “surrender” remark

A parallel row has centred on Gandhi’s remark, made in Bhopal, that Modi “surrendered” to the United States after a phone call from then President Donald Trump during the India-Pakistan military standoff, and his call for the government to respond to Trump’s repeated claims of having mediated the ceasefire. The BJP called the remark an insult to the armed forces, with spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi saying it reflected “a deeply sick and dangerous mindset,” and BJP president J P Nadda calling it a “grave insult” to the Army. The Congress has stood by the remark.

BJP’s response

Union Minister G Kishan Reddy said on September 27 that the Congress was “spreading malicious propaganda” targeting the Army Chief, the Air Force, the surgical strikes, Doval, the Lok Sabha Speaker, the Chief Justice, the ED, the CBI, the Intelligence Bureau and media houses, and accused the party of double standards on election results.

Taken together, the Congress’s campaign links a live controversy, the VanDyke release, to a decades-old episode, Kandahar, and layers on newer claims about surveillance, offshore funds and a think tank, to build a case that the security establishment under Doval has repeatedly yielded to external pressure. The BJP’s counter is that the pattern itself is the problem, that Congress’s questioning extends to institutions it argues should be above partisan attack. Neither side has produced material that resolves the dispute, and the exchange looks set to continue as both parties draw on it for their wider political messaging.