Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday used satire to take a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he tweeted an “escape formula of scamsters Lalit Modi and Nirav Modi”, while his party said a complaint was made against Mehul Choksi, the business partner of Nirav Modi, almost three years ago.
Starting a hashtag #ModiRobsIndia, Mr. Gandhi tweeted, “The scamster’s escape formula: La(Mo)+Ni(Mo) —{gt} Bha(Go)”.
The Congress produced copies of a complaint by a Delhi-based businessman, Varun Khuraniya, on May 7, 2015 where he had mentioned to the Corporate Affairs Ministry and the Serious Frauds Investigation Office (SFIO) how Mr. Choksi and his company —Gitanjali Gems Ltd. — was defaulting on loans to banks such as Punjab National Bank and ICICI Bank.
“Yesterday [Thursday] we had shared copies of a complaint made on June 2016 but when we probed a little more, we found that a complaint was made on May 7, 2015. PMO, Ministry of Finance, Enforcement Directorate, SFIO, BJP governments of Gujarat and Maharashtra were all aware of the scam,” said Randeep Surjewala, Congress’s communication head, at a press conference.
Countering claims made by government sources that celebrity designer Nirav Modi was never a part of the official Indian delegation at Davos, Mr. Surjewala said, “This photo where he [Nirav Modi] is seen was tweeted by the Prime Minister Office’s handle, it was released by the Press Information Bureau and the Ministry of External Affairs went a step further and said ‘Together we can’ in the photo they tweeted.”
The Congress played a 2015 clip of the government announcing the gold demonetisation scheme in which Prime Minister Modi is heard referring to Mehul bhai [Choksi] in contrast to a video clip from Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in which he was asking for the name of the owner of Gitanjali Gems.
Why the denial?
“We are not saying there is anything wrong if the Prime Minister knows him well. But why was Law Minister Mr. Prasad denying it when the PM calls him affectionately. But the government trying to distance itself raises suspicion,” he said.
The Congress claimed the scam has now almost touched ₹30,000 crore and after the main accused have fled, the government’s low cost flight scheme — UDAN — has acquired a new meaning. “Modi government’s new buzz word ‘Udan’ has found a new meaning — every scamster can fleece and fly undetected and unchecked,” he said.
