An emboldened Opposition on Thursday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA with the Congress leader and MP Rahul Gandhi demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the stock market crash on June 4, the day when the Lok Sabha poll results were announced.
This demand for JPC comes just few days before Modi is set to return for third successive term and take oath as the Prime Minister on June 9 to head a BJP-led coalition government.
However, Senior BJP leader Piyush Goyal later in the evening dismissed Gandhi’s allegations, noting that the Congress leader is trying to mislead investors and making such remarks as he is unable to handle the INDIA’s loss in the Lok Sabha election.
Goyal asserted that Gandhi’s allegations are baseless and highlighted that Indian retail investors have been the biggest beneficiary of rise in market capitalisation of Indian stock exchanges from ₹67-lakh crore in 2014 to ₹415-lakh crore now (ten years of Modi’s rule).
“Rahul Gandhi has still not overcome the loss in the Lok Sabha elections. Now, he is conspiring to mislead the market investors. Today, India has become the fifth largest economy. Today, the whole world accepts India as the fastest growing economy,” Goyal said.
Goyal said that Indian investors had infact made trading gains (at the cost of foreign portfolio investors) from the volatility in markets in the last few days including on election vote counting day. He noted that Gandhi was referring about loss of valuation (market capitalisation), which was different from gains or losses from the value of shares transacted on those days.
Rahul Gandhi’s Allegations
Describing the stock market crash on vote counting day (June 4) as “biggest ever scam in India’s stock market history,” Gandhi alleged direct involvement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah in the scam leading to Indian retail investors losing about ₹30-lakh crore of their wealth on that fateful day.
“We demand a JPC into this. We are absolutely convinced that this is a scam. Somebody has made thousands of crore of rupees at cost of Indian retail investors. PM and HM have given an indication to buy ahead of the polls. This is a criminal act.
We want an enquiry on the PM, HM, dubious foreign investors and the fake exit pollsters,” Gandhi said at a press conference in the capital.
Gandhi said that the Prime Minister, Home Minister and Finance Minister had ahead of the polls urged retail investors to buy stocks, claiming that stocks would further rise when June 4 results would be out.
On their part, the exit pollsters had on June 1 announced a clear majority for BJP and NDA. However, the actual result trend on June 4 proved otherwise, leading to huge downturn in the stock markets and wiping out ₹30-lakh crore of investor wealth on the day.
On the results day, the benchmark indices BSE Sensex tanked 4389.73 pts or 5.74 per cent to close at 72,079.05, and Nifty 50 ended at 21,884.50, lower by 1,379.40 or 5.93 per cent.
This sharp decline of benchmark indices came in the wake of emerging trends from the Lok Sabha election results indicating that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was substantially trailing behind the levels that pollsters had indicated and would fall short of the magical 272 mark that would have given it a single party majority in Lok Sabha.
“People very high up in BJP has carried out this scam. I am saying they had partners who carried out these exit polls. We would like to know if the exit polls were actually carried out. We would like to know the methodology of these polls. We have some idea of who these investors, who made thousands of crores of rupees are. We are not speaking out of the air.
We are confident that when investigation is done, interesting things will be revealed and we think PM and HM are directly involved in this,” Gandhi said.
Rahul’s questions
Gandhi had three main questions related to the alleged scam and demanded answers for them.
(1) Why did PM and HM give specific investment advice to the five crore families investing in stock market? Is it their job to give investment advice?
(2) Why both interviews were given to the same media house owned by the same business group which is also under SEBI investigation for manipulating the stock market?
(3) What is the connection between BJP, fake exit pollsters and dubious foreign investors who invested one day before exit poll and made huge profit at the cost of five crore families?