Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah were "directly involved" in what he described as the "biggest stock market scam" in which retail investors lost Rs 30 lakh crore, and demanded a joint parliamentary committee probe into it.
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, he also sought an inquiry into the alleged role of the prime minister, home minister and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in this "scam", claiming they had advised retail investors to buy stock before the results, which is "unprecedented".
Gandhi also alleged that PM Modi and Shah knew how many seats the Bharatiya Janata Party was winning, but they "artificially" jacked up the stock prices with the help of "fake" exit polls and the markets crashed when the results came out on June 4 leading to huge losses to retail investors.
"The common people of India lost Rs 30 lakh crore in the stock market on June 4...We demand a JPC (Joint Parliamentary Committee) investigation into this biggest-ever stock market scam," the former Congress chief said.
"This is a criminal act and we demand a JPC to investigate the involvement of the prime minister, home minister and finance minister and who are the people who made the money in this 'scam'," he said referring to those behind the exit polls.
"I am saying that people very high up in the BJP have carried out the scam...they had partners who carried out these exit polls. We would like to know if these exit polls were actually carried out, if people were actually sent out, and we would also like to know the methodology of these polls...we would like to understand who these investors are. We have some sense of who these investors are."
"We are not just speaking out of the air, we are confident that if an investigation is done, interesting things will be revealed and we think that the Prime Minister and Home Minister are directly involved in this," he alleged.
"We are absolutely convinced that this is a scam. Somebody has made thousands of crores of rupees at the cost of Indian retail investors, and the Prime Minister and the Home Minister have given an indication to buy, and this is a criminal act. So, we demand today a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate this," he said.
Gandhi pointed out that when the actual results were way off the mark from the exit poll claims, the market crashed leading to loss of Rs 30 lakh crores to the retail investors.
The former Congress president observed that all this was deliberately and wilfully planned and executed. He claimed that the BJP knew that its seats were not going to be more than 220 from their internal survey and the feedback received from intelligence agencies, but despite that the exit polls were made to show that the BJP was winning a large number of seats.
Besides, he pointed out, the interviews were carried out by the channels "owned by Adani" and asked why did the PM and the home minister need to give investment advice which people are bound to take seriously, which they did, and later suffered huge losses.
Gandhi also posed a set of three questions, asking, "Why did the PM and HM give specific investment advice to the five crore families investing in the stock markets? Is it their job to give investment advice to the people?".
"Why both interviews were given to the same media house owned by the same business group, which is also under SEBI investigations for manipulating stock markets," he also asked.
"What is the connection between the BJP, the fake exit pollsters, and the dubious foreign investors, who invested one day before the exit polls were announced and made huge profits, at the cost of five crore families?" Gandhi asked.
He claimed that for the first time we noted that during polls, Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Shah, Finance Minister Sitharaman commented on the stock market.
"Why did the prime minister and home minister give investment advice to people," Gandhi asked and claimed "BJP leaders had information that exit polls were wrong."
Asked whether he was linking Adani group, Gandhi said this is a broader issue than the Adani issue.
"It is connected to the Adani issue but it is much broader. This is directly the Prime Minister of India and the Home Minister who are privy to data on the actual election results, who have the IB reports, who have their own data, and who are advising retail investors to buy stocks.
"Quite interestingly, this has never happened before that the PM has commented on the stock market. This is happening for the first time when he is saying that the stock market is going to boom," he claimed.
"We are interested in having a JPC to investigate the role of the Prime Minister, the role of the Home Minister, role of BJP members, and also those who have done this fake exit polls and finally we want to understand who are the people, these foreign investors who did these trades," he said.
He also cited the chronology of events in which Amit Shah said on May 13 that "buy shares before June 4th" and on May 19, Modi had said that "stock markets will break records on June 4th".
