The Congress has issued a direct challenge to senior BJP leader Amit Shah, demanding that he disclose his recent stock trading activities amidst allegations of insider trading and market manipulation. The party claims that retail investors lost a staggering Rs 30 lakh crore due to market crashes following the Lok Sabha poll results which opposed Shah's own predictions as well as the exit polls.
Taking to social media platform X, the Kerala Congress outlined their demands under what it termed as the "Stock Market Scam Challenge." They posted: "This is the list of listed shares Amit Shah declared in his affidavit. To verify there is no manipulation or insider trading, we need to verify only the following. 1. How many shares did Amit Shah buy before the exit polls were published? 2. How much did he sell on 3rd June after the exit polls were published? Similarly, this exercise needs to be done with Piyush Goyal, other ministers, pollsters and journalists who were part of the ecosystem."
They further added, "Now these are Amit Shah's unlisted shareholdings. Also his wife's listed shareholdings. We are putting an open challenge to @AmitShah. Can you publish your trading activities for the last one month out in public and come clean?"
Congress Demands JPC Probe Into Stock Market 'Scam', BJP Dismisses Charge
This comes the day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused Narendra Modi and Amit Shah of being involved in the "biggest stock market scam." Gandhi asserted, "The common people of India lost Rs 30 lakh crore in the stock market on June 4... We demand a JPC investigation into this biggest-ever stock market scam."
Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi claimed that the Prime Minister and Home Minister knew the actual seat count BJP was likely to win but manipulated stock prices through fictitious exit polls, leading to a market crash when the real results were announced. He demanded an inquiry into the alleged roles of the Prime Minister, Home Minister, and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
He elaborated, "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 PM and the home minister have given an indication to buy, and this is a criminal act. So, we demand today a JPC to investigate this."
In a swift rebuttal, Union Minister Piyush Goyal dismissed Rahul Gandhi's allegations as baseless. Goyal stated, "He (Gandhi) does not understand. That is why the people of India do not trust him." Goyal insisted that domestic investors had profited while foreign investors bore the brunt of the losses, adding, "When the exit polls were broadcast, it was foreign investors who bought expensive stocks while domestic investors sold. When the market crashed, it was the other way round."
Goyal argued that the market's recovery under the BJP-led government highlighted the benefits for domestic investors, noting that the market capitalisation had increased significantly since 2014.