Back in December 2014 Rahul Gandhi came out with a grand attack on the Modi Government accusing it of only working for 3-4 corporate houses. Taking his accusations of the Modi government favoring corporates a step further, this December Rahul Gandhi attacked Modi personally accusing him of taking bribes from Sahara and Birla groups during his tenure as the Gujarat CM.
On Sahara and Birla, Rahul Gandhi was merely repeating what former AAP leader Prashant Bhushan had earlier alleged. Supreme Court had found Bhshan’s allegations weak and the court commented that anyone in the world could be accused of corruption if proofs like Sahara or Birla ‘diaries’ are deemed credible.
Now Rahul Gandhi’s charges of Modi government working for a few corporate houses is also turning out to be an embarrassment. The BJP has put out documents in the public that shows loans to the tune of ₹ 36.5 lakh crores being ‘waived off’ during UPA’s tenure.
Party also stated that the ₹ 72,000 crore loan owed by Gautam Adani and ₹ 1.13 lakh crores worth of loans to Ambani were also provided during the UPA tenure. Incidentally there also have been reports of Mukesh Ambani stating, ‘Congress to ab apni dukaan hai’, which was revealed in Radia tapes.
The truth – Modi government is in the process of ‘recovery’ of bad loans ‘doled out’ to big industrialists under UPA government. pic.twitter.com/YydH0NWd9s
— BJP (@BJP4India) December 26, 2016
The BJP also talked about Manmohan Singh’s 2011 statement about steps needing to be taken to help private sector entities if they get into difficulties, which was issued in the background of Kingfisher’s financial woes. On top of it, back in 2012 SBI, which already had an exposure of about ₹ 1400 crores towards Kingfisher, chose to provide a further ₹ 1500 cr in a fresh bailout. Rahul Gandhi had often termed that it was BJP that helped Vijay Mallya.
Apart from these, the nexus between DLF and Robert Vadra was alleged back in 2012. Interestingly what isn’t part of the common public discourse is the claim that the DLF-Gandhi family link actually began during Rajiv Gandhi’s time when Robert Vadra was nowhere in the picture. This Rajiv-DLF link has been written about in the autobiography of the DLF owner KP Singh.
Rahul Gandhi’s jibes about Ambani and Adani also have been found to be just rhetoric as these businessmen grew when Congress was in power. In September this year, we had published a fact check which debunked the theory of Ambani and Adani getting preferential treatment after Modi came to power.
Besides this, there also has been embarrassment for Rahul Gandhi and the Congress Party after it was reported that Rahul Gandhi himself had used a Sahara owned vehicle while campaigning in UP.
Rahul used Sahara vehicle to file nomination papers in Amethi for 2014 LS elections https://t.co/hiVCbfZf18 via @PGurus1
— Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) December 24, 2016
Looks like Rahul Gandhi will have to work on fresh set of charges.
