Rahul Gandhi at the Congress press conference in Delhi on Thursday.
Credit: Reuters Photo
New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were “directly involved” in the country's “biggest stock market scam” in which retail investors lost Rs 30 lakh crore and demanded a probe by the Joint Parliamentary Committee into what he described as a “criminal act”.
Rahul opened the new front against the BJP at a press conference here as he referred to the statements of Modi, Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the stock market during the recently concluded Lok Sabha election campaign and claimed that it prompted massive buying but was followed by market crash once the actual poll results were declared.
Referring to the stock markets rising after “fake” exit polls and then crashing the day Lok Sabha votes were counted on June 4, he claimed those who were aware of the scam made money and the people should know who benefitted from it. “I am saying people very high-up have carried out this scam,” he claimed.
BJP was quick to dismiss Rahul's allegations with outgoing Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal accusing the Congress leader of hatching a conspiracy to mislead investors with his “absurd allegations”.
Following exit polls, he claimed, foreign investors bought stocks at high rates while Indian investors sold and booked profits.
Rahul said Modi told the country three-four times during the campaign that the stock market was going to 'skyrocket' while Amit Shah asked people to invest in stocks before June 4.
“The media releases fake exit polls, BJP's internal survey showed them 220 seats, BJP leaders had this info. Intelligence agencies had said they will get 200-220 seats. Stock market breaks all records on June 3, and on June 4, stock market crashes,” Rahul said.
Asking why did the Prime Minister and the Home Minister “give investment advice to people”, he demanded a JPC probe, which should look into the role of Modi, Shah and those who carried out the exit polls.
“This is the first time the Prime Minister has commented very interestingly and multiple times, one after the other, saying that the stock market is going to boom. At the same time, he has information that the exit polls are wrong. He has information that he knows what is going to happen because he has IB data and he also has his own party data,” he said.
Rahul said there was massive stock activity on May 31, which was more than double what was there a day before. “Who are these people? These are those who were aware of a scam happening. Foreign investors invested thousands of crores of rupees. Who was at loss? Retail investors lost Rs 30 lakh crore. This is the biggest scam in the history of the Indian stock market,” he said.
He asked why the two top leaders gave specific investment advice to the five crore families investing in the stock market.
“Is it their job to give investment advice? Second, why were interviews given to the same media house, owned by the same business group, which is also under SEBI investigation for manipulating the stock market? Third, what is the connection between the BJP, the fake exit pollsters and the dubious foreign investors?” he said.
Asked whether he was linking Adani group, Gandhi said this is a broader issue than the Adani issue and added, "This is directly the Prime Minister of India and the Home Minister who are privy to data on the actual election results, who have the IB reports, who have their own data, and who are advising retail investors to buy stocks."