Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who was away last week visiting his grandmother in Italy, registered his presence in Parliament on Tuesday when he led a protest of Congress lawmakers in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue inside the Parliament complex on the Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam.
Along with other Opposition parties, Congress MPs demanded answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue on the floor of the House.
The Congress MPs asked the Prime Minister to break his silence on the issue of fugitive jewellery designer Nirav Modi.
Playing on the dual meaning of Nirav Modi’s name, Mr. Gandhi tweeted in Hindi, “There is one Nirav Modi and the other Modi is nirav or silent.”
Declines charges
The Congress also countered Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s charge against the former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram that he had favoured private companies through a gold import scheme just days before the Modi government took charge in May 2014, terming it “baseless and false”.
“Monday’s statement made by Ravi Shankar Prasad is preposterous. He has levelled unwarranted allegations which we reject and condemn,” said Anand Sharma, the former Commerce Minister, at a press conference.
Mr. Sharma said that in view of the growing current account because of huge imports of gold and crude oil, the UPA government in 2013 had imposed restrictions on import of gold and made it mandatory to export 20% of imported gold after value addition under the 80:20 scheme.
“We would like to warn the government today and caution the country that India’s governance and administration will be collapsing under this vendetta campaign of the government,” Mr. Sharma said and added that even bureaucrats are now being excessively vilified.
He even accused the government of producing manufactured documents to suit their political narrative.
Giving a break-up of alleged financial frauds in the past 45 months, Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said 184 scamsters have either fled or missing and over ₹73,635 crore of public money in banks have been lost to such scams.
He claimed that data of the Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai Police show that as much ₹19,314 crore has been lost between 2015 and 2017 in Maharashtra.
