BJP, Congress spar over 'help' extended to Vijay Mallya

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress on Monday traded charges over “help” extended to Vijay Mallya in securing loans and fleeing the country, with the two parties hurling accusations at each other for coming to the aid of the beleaguered businessman.
 
Ahead of the Budget session beginning Tuesday, BJP sought to corner Congress, alleging the “corrupt hands” which helped Mallya secure bank loans belonged to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
 
Singh and Chidambaram rejected the charge, while the Congress targeted the Modi government over allowing the liquor baron to flee to foreign shores.

 

BJP spokesman Sambit Patra quoted from purported letters written by Mallya to Singh seeking his intervention to bail out his struggling Kingfisher Airlines following which it got loans.
 
Patra asked Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul to explain at whose behest the defaulting company got loans.
 
“The hands which pulled the strings to ensure that Mallya received loans are visible now. It belonged to Chidambaram and Singh. Did the hands of 10, Janpath also pull the string? Sonia and Rahul Gandhi should come out in public to say at whose behest the loans were sanctioned to Kingfisher Airline,” he told a press conference.

 
“It was after one such letter Mallya had written to Singh on November 14, 2011 that the Prime Minister told the media that ‘we have to find ways to get Kingfisher out of trouble’,” Patra claimed.
 
Trashing the accusation, Singh and Chidambaram told the media that it was a routine thing for captains of industry to write letters to the government which were marked to appropriate authorities and that they did not violate any law.