Three days have passed since the news of the PNB scam hit the airwaves, but the BJP government is yet to answer even one question out of the multiple ones that the Congress party has posed. Instead, the government has deployed its ministers and spokespersons to try and deflect this as a “UPA-era scam” that “started in 2011”. Absurdly, Minister Prakash Javadekar claimed that the Modi government’s “alertness” has brought the scam to light. This is fat from the truth. The Modi government sat tight on the scam for a good three years, despite possessing inputs about it. All the fraudulent LOUs referred to in the CBI’s FIR were issued after 2017, three years into the Modi government. Sources in the CBI told the media that the additional 293 LOUs under investigation were also only issued after 2017. Not one fraudulent transaction has been traced back to the time of the UPA government.
Mr. Javadekar claimed the NDA government was swift in taking action against the accused and has revoked their passports. The suspension of the passport only happened after the news of the scam broke in the media. Just like the look-out notice, the suspension came long after all the accused had left the country in early January. The government has floated many figures of assets seized of the accused, but they seem wildly inflated and it’s unclear as to how the government is assessing the values of these assets on the same day of the raids. Given all the time this government gave the accused to flee the country, it seems likely that most of the money has already been siphoned out of India into assets abroad. This government seems more occupied with ‘perception management’ than taking any concrete action.
Mr. Javadekar also tried to portray the massive Rs. 21,000 crore scam as a mere “banking fraud” that has nothing to do with the government. This is simply not believable. The scale of the scam, and the fact that all the agencies of the government at every level ignored repeated complaints that started way back in 2015, strongly suggests that the accused enjoyed patronage and protection from top officials in the government. He further tried to blame the broader banking crisis and NPAs (Non Performing Assets) on the UPA, whereas the fact is that under the economic mismanagement of the Modi government, NPA’s of public sector banks have risen by Rs 5.05 crores in just 42 months. The havoc unleashed on the economy by disastrous steps like demonetization and incompetent implementation of the GST has further added to banking woes.
Earlier, Union Law Minister Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed that Nirav Modi was not part of the Prime Minister’s delegation to Davos and had come to the Swiss town on his own. It is inconceivable, however, that a businessman features in the official photo of the delegation published by the MEA without being vetted and approved by the government. Moreover, this is not the first time Nirav Modi accompanied the official delegation to Davos, he was also part of the 100-strong delegation Finance Minister Arun Jaitley led in 2016. This, despite the fact that PMO and all agencies under the Finance Ministry were aware of the scam brewing since 2015.
The BJP’s defense, mounted by Union Ministers Mr. Prasad and Mr. Javadekar, has been entirely free of facts and answers and full of lies and deflections. This itself points to a panicked government that has much to hide.
Source INCINDIA
