Keeping its guns trained on the Congress and ex-Finance Minister P Chidambaram over the previous Congress-led UPA government’s 80:20 gold import scheme, the ruling BJP on Wednesday asked why trading houses, including the scam-tainted Gitanjali Gems, were allowed to import gold just a day before the Lok Sabha election results were to be announced on 16 May 2014.

Joining issue with Congress leader Anand Sharma ~ who on Tuesday rubbished these allegations against Chidambaram as “preposterous and irresponsible” while maintaining that they were not backed by facts ~ Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad shared a Finance Ministry’s purported office memorandum dated 15 May 2014 to reinforce his allegations.

Advertisement

“Was it a price, was it a consideration, was it pressure or was it an obligation. What was it that (then FM) Mr Chidambaram, a well-informed politician, took this decision one day before the results were to come,” Prasad reportedly alleged at a press conference in the BJP headquarters here.

Prasad said the nature of pressure or price could be gauged by the point that in a single day this file travelled with “supersonic speed through nine desks after his signature” and it was followed by the office memorandum.

He said Chidambaram knew the Constitution and “any person having the slightest consideration of integrity and propriety of democratic polity would never do this.”

Prasad also showed a purported RBI notification dated 21 May 2014, saying that the central bank administration of that time notified the order to allow trading houses to import gold under the scheme without waiting for the new government to assume office.

Noting that the results of the Lok Sabha elections were announced on 16 May 2014 and that it was clear that a new government will be formed, the Minister asked why did the RBI administration then let the notification be issued on 21 May without waiting for the new government to assume office.

In August 2013, the then UPA government had reportedly introduced the 80:20 gold import scheme, which allowed traders to import gold only after they had exported 20 per cent of gold from their previous import. The rule was scrapped in November 2014 by the Narendra Modi government.

The BJP’s continued attack on the principal Opposition party and its ex-FM came amid the Congress’s attempts to pin down the government over the Rs 12,700 crore-PNB scam involving fugitive jewellers, Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi of Geetanjali Gems.

The Congress-led Opposition has been attacking the Modi government, asking how did the PNB scam ~ dubbed as the country’s biggest-ever bank fraud ~ happen under its watch and how could Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi escape the country in early January this year just before the scam came to light.