Letter to BS: PMO is obliged to put Raghuram Rajan's list in public domain

While the political slugfest over the banks’ non-performing assets continues unabated with both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) blaming each other, former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan’s (pictured) written deposition to the Lok Sabha Estimate Committee has added a new dimension to this raging controversy. Rajan’s deposition said that during his tenure, the RBI had set up a fraud monitoring cell to coordinate the early reporting of fraud cases to the investigating agencies and had in fact, sent a list of high-profile cases to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for a coordinated action to bring at least one or two to book. Interestingly, there has been no argument put forth by either the PMO or the BJP yet. For the sake of transparency and accountability, the PMO is obliged to put it in public domain whether Rajan’s list had included the likes of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. It also needs to be examined whether there was an element of criminality behind such seeming inaction. It is also hoped that the estimate committee, in larger public interest, would consider summoning the top officials from the PMO to explain their apparent inaction and fix responsibility for the same. 

S K Choudhury  Bengaluru

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