As the turmoil in the country continues and the central government struggles to find new ways to tackle the financial crisis that is bound to follow in the times ahead, the political parties have taken this opportunity to further their party propaganda.
“Accusations”
Earlier, Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi had stated that the list of the wilful defaulters
released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had not been presented in Parliament proceedings as it contained ‘friends’ or individuals associated with the ruling party, that is, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Rahul Gandhi had asked for the names of the Top 50 Defaulters’ names.
“Now the RBI has given the names of Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and many of BJP’s “friends” in the list of bank frauds. That is why this truth was held back from Parliament,” Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.
Among these accusations, the Congress party officials had also alleged that the BJP party had waived loans worth Rs. 6.66 Lakh Crores owed by the defaulters to help them. They stated that this waiving of bad loans had been occurring from 2014 till September 2019.
“FM Responds in twitter thread”
This resulted in an angry backlash by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in response to the accusation. The Finance Minister took to Twitter to respond to the allegation and accused the Congress minister of “trying to mislead people in a brazen manner.” She clarified the list of defaulters and the reasons in a 13 part series of tweets to provide details to the public as well as to prove the allegation false and baseless.
“Shri @RahulGandhi MP (LS) and Shri @rssurjewala spokesperson of @INCIndia has
attempted to mislead people in a brazen manner. Typical to @INCIndia, they resort to
sensationalising facts by taking them out of context. In the following tweets wish to respond to the issues raised,” Sitharaman said in the first of her 13 tweets which she posted on Tuesday night.
“Today’s attempt of @INCIndia leaders is to mislead on wilful defaulters, bad loans & write-offs.
Between 2009-10 & 2013-14, Scheduled Commercial Banks had written off Rs.145226.00
crores. Wished Shri @RahulGandhi consulted Dr Manmohan Singh on what this writing-off was about,” she said in another tweet.
She further stated that those defaulters who refuse to repay even though they have the capacity to pay, divert or siphon-off funds, or dispose of secured assets without the respective bank’s permission would be categorised as wilful defaulters.
“They are those well-connected promoters who benefitted from UPA’s ‘Phone banking’,”
Sitharaman said.
In her tweets, she went on to quote the former RBI Governor Raghuram Raja who had
uncovered a large number of bad loans and had stated that they had originated during the period between 2006 to 2008. Sitharaman also listed the cases of Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya and said that the Narendra Modi-led BJP government is pursuing these wilful defaulters.
Her angry Twitter thread ended by asking the Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi as well as his party to ‘introspect’.
“Neither while in power nor while in the opposition has the @INCIndia shown any commitment or inclination to stop corruption & cronyism,” her tweet read.
However, none of the tweets mentioned the names of the top 50 bank loan defaulters as asked by Gandhi.
