The list of business heads leaving India after failing to pay back loans is quite long now – Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, Nitin Sandesh, to name just a few. Raghuram Rajan, the former Governor of Reserve Bank of India, had warned the Central Government well in time regarding this by sending the list of defaulters to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). He had even proposed that action should be taken against two such money swindlers.
What was done with the list? Information was sought from the PMO through a letter under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The PMO not only avoided the question but claimed the RTI notice was not admissible and that it did not have any proper objective.
The Fraud Surveillance Branch, to enable investigating agencies to quickly report cases of such frauds, was created in January 2016. This implies that Raghuram Rajan had sent the letter to the PMO after the creation of the agency. According to Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala, the letter sent in 2016 contained the names of Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. But the Central Government has so far kept mum about this.
The Central Government had already lost its face in the Nirav Modi-Mehul Choksi affair. Questions have been raised about the Modi Government’s seriousness regarding investigating the matter after no steps were taken even after the Estimates Committee of Parliament received a 17-page letter from Rajan. And now, with the Centre refusing to divulge what steps were taken after receiving Rajan’s letter to the PMO, the opposition is raising its pitch about the former allegedly helping the defaulters to flee the country.
