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Slugfest over Mallya bailout drags Manmohan Singh into line of fire

The allegations were, however, vehemently rejected by the Congress, as well as by Dr Singh

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Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh
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With elections to the Punjab Assembly just four days away, a political slugfest erupted on Monday between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress over linking former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh with the absconding liquor baron and Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra quoted from purported letters written by Mallya to Dr Singh in which he had sought his intervention and subsequent to which his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines allegedly received loans. The allegations were, however, vehemently rejected by the Congress, as well as by Dr Singh.

Dragging the top Congress leadership also into the row, Patra alleged that the then Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Pulok Chatterjee would “snatch files” from Dr Singh to take it to 10 Janpath, Sonia Gandhi’s residence. “The hands which pulled the strings to ensure that Mallya received loans are visible now. It belonged to Chidambaram and Singh,” he said. In one of the letters, Mallya said that he was very “relieved” and “pleased”, apparently referring to developments in the interim, according to Patra.

But the former PM dismissed this correspondence as nothing but ordinary representation that anyone in the government would have dealt with. He said as the PM, he used to get so many representations and he would routinely pass on them to the appropriate authorities, pointing out that anyone in his position would have done the same.

The Congress also reacted sharply, firing six questions at the BJP asking, whose government had permitted Mallya to escape from India swallowing up public sector banks’ money, who had waived his loan of Rs 1,200 crore, who had brought him to the Rajya Sabha and why had no action been taken on millions he earned in the offshore accounts.

On Monday morning, BJP spokesman Patra had said it was after one such letter Mallya had written to Singh on November 14, 2011 that he told the media that ‘we have to find ways to get Kingfisher out of trouble. In another letter, he sought Singh’s intervention to get funds from banks released immediately, the BJP leader claimed.

Patra further alleged that a top PMO official had spoken to ministries concerned following his letter to Singh and Mallya had mentioned it. He also cited another letter in which Mallya allegedly wrote to Chidambaram in March 2013, seeking his intervention to get NOC from the SBI, which headed the consortium of banks which had given unrecovered loans to the airline, and its subsidiaries as his liquor company was in talks with Diageo for a deal.

Reacting to the BJP’s charges, former finance minister P Chidambaram said the government receives hundreds of representations each day and no minister deals with them as they go down to the officials concerned. Reacting to a question by a reporter on the 2013 letter, Chidambaram said the letter being referred to was not for bank loans but for the NOC (no-objection certificate) of preferential allotments of shares. As regards the loans given in 2009 to Mallya, Chidambaram corrected the reporter saying that he was not the finance minister then to help out.

Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjiwala asked why was Mallya not arrested by the current government after he was interrogated by the Enforcement Directorate and also when action was initiated by SEBI (Security Exchange Board of India) and SFIO (Serious Fraud Investigation Office).  

Surjiwala alleged that a much worse dereliction of duty was that in the interregnum period, Mallya has received substantial payments in India and abroad, like the ‘Diageo plc’ i.e. a British Multinational Alcoholic Breweries Company with headquarters in London, paying  a sum of $40 million to the liquor baron as part of an agreement in February, 2016.

“All money transactions have taken place unchecked while the hard earned money of Indian people extended through a consortium of banks to the extent of Rs 9,091 crore has not been repaid,” said the Congress spokesperson.

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