Uproar in house after Rahul Gandhi seeks names of bank defaulters

NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha witnessed an uproar on Monday after Congress members led by Rahul Gandhi accused the government of ducking his question seeking naming of top 50 wilful bank defaulters and alleged that the Speaker did not let him ask a supplementary question.

Gandhi said, “Why is the government so scared of naming them (wilful defaulters)? The PM had said action will be taken against them. But why is the government not placing their names on the table?”

The ruling side said that the names of wilful defaulters had already been put up on the official website and also hit back at Gandhi by indirectly referring to the controversy over the sale of an MF Husain painting of his father, late PM Rajiv Gandhi, by his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, to the arrested Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor. Later, Gandhi inadvertently referred to his “question about 500 top defaulters” at a press conference.

When his starred question was called out by the Speaker, Gandhi got up and said, “Our banking system is practically not working anymore. I suspect more banks are going to fail due to the current global situation. The central cause of this failure of the banks and the central cause of unemployment is the stealing of money from our banks by a large number of people. I had asked a simple question. Who are the top 50 wilful defaulters? I got no answer….”

Minister of state for finance Anurag Thakur started answering by quoting data to argue that defaults and frauds pertaining to funds advanced by banks had come down during the Modi regime as compared to the erstwhile Congress-led UPA government.

“A list of wilful defaulters is available on the website. All these people took the money and went away during their (Congress) rule,” said Thakur.