Connecting the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation move, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday alleged that while “the Prime Minister took out money from people’s pockets and promised to protect it by putting it in banks, his friends and cronies are stealing it.”
Top leaders of the Congress, now part of a reconstituted Working Committee called the Steering Committee, debated the issue threadbare and asked the Prime Minister to break his silence and “assure 132 crore Indians that their deposits are safe in banks.”
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Senior leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mallikarjun Kharge have been asked to reach out to other Opposition parties and work out a joint strategy including demanding a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).
To counter allegations that the scam had been going on since 2011 (when the UPA was in power), the Congress released copies of 367 Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) that were signed in 2017, and Mr. Gandhi said more than 90% of them were during the NDA regime.
Calling the BJP allegation against the UPA a ‘diversionary’ tactic, Mr. Gandhi said, “This government constantly refuses to accept responsibility. I said in my meetings in Karnataka that the Prime Minister looks at the wicketkeeper and then plays cricket. The fact of the matter is that the Prime Minister, through his actions, has destroyed the financial system of the country. He has demonetised the economy, taken money out of people’s pockets and put it in the banking sector. Now his friends and cronies are stealing it from the banking sector and the Prime Minister is not saying anything.”
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“I would request the Prime Minister that he should come out, and instead of spending an hour and a half explaining to little kids how to take exams, he should tell the people of India what he is going to do about this Nirav Modi and what he is going to do to keep the banking system safe,” he said.
The Congress president also said that the former Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, explained to the Steering Committee that a “fraud of this scale cannot take place without high-level protection.”
Earlier, Congress leader Kapil Sibal claimed the market value of listed companies in the gems and jewellery business is around ₹41.66 billion while the gross current debt of the sector is ₹94 billion. “This means that the debt is twice the market capitalisation and that is a scam in itself. Who can say that the government did not know this,” he asked.