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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday demanded a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probe into stock market fluctuations from May 31, a day before the release of the Lok Sabha election exit polls, to June 3, when benchmark indices rose to an all-time high after exit poll projections, and the massive drop of Rs 30 trillion on June 4, the day of the election results.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rejected Gandhi’s allegations, with party leader Piyush Goyal terming these baseless and a conspiracy to mislead investors. Goyal, a member of the outgoing Union Cabinet, said small Indian investors benefitted from the rally that the market saw on Monday, a day before the counting of votes.
Addressing a press conference on Thursday evening, Gandhi alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah were “directly involved” in what he termed the country’s “biggest stock market scam”. He alleged the two leaders, in their interviews to a private news television channel, gave “specific investment advice to 50 million families investing in the stock market, which led to retail investors losing Rs 30 trillion on Tuesday.
Gandhi specified that he wasn’t blaming the government but pointing out what “two individuals” did caused losses to common investors. When asked whether this JPC probe demand would suffer the fate of the Opposition’s previous such demands, Gandhi said the “impunity” with which the PM functioned earlier had ended and the result this time would be different.
The Congress’ Praveen Chakravarty said trading volume doubled on May 31, as foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought 58 per cent of the value, while they were net sellers on the other days. “The market rose to an all-time high on June 3 and crashed by Rs 30 trillion on June 4. The question is who these FIIs were, whose money was this, and what is their relationship with pollsters,” said Chakravarty, who was present at the press conference.
At his press conference at the BJP headquarters two hours later, Goyal argued that daily fluctuations were common in the market, but only the long-term trends should be studied to draw inferences about market behaviour. He said it was an achievement of the 10 years of the Narendra Modi government that the market cap had now crossed Rs 400 trillion, and India’s market was one of the top five in the world. “The market cap during the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) years was Rs 67 trillion, which has increased to Rs 415 trillion, an increase of Rs 348 trillion in the last 10 years,” he said. Goyal said Gandhi was upset that the Modi government had returned for a third successive occasion.
Pointing to the PM and home minister’s interviews to a news channel, which he said was owned by the country’s leading corporate group, Gandhi had claimed at his press conference that it needed to be investigated why the PM and home minister gave “specific investment advice to 50 million families investing in the stock market? Is it their job to give investment advice”?
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The Congress leader said the interviews by the PM and the home minister were given to the same media house owned by a business group that was under “Sebi investigation for manipulating the stock market”. “What is the connection between the BJP, the fake pollsters and the dubious foreign investors who invested one day before the exit polls and made huge profits at the cost of 50 million families,” Gandhi asked.
He alleged that it was the first occasion that the PM, the home minister and the finance minister commented on the stock market. Gandhi said the BJP leadership was privy to the Intelligence Bureau’s estimate that their party would get 220 seats, and still commented that the market was set to “boom”.
