Small businesses collapsing while Centre helped crony capitalists run away, alleges Congress

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Monday hit out at the Narendra Modi government alleging that the Centre has helped 'crony capitalists' run away with the public money. "Small businesses are collapsing today while crony capitalists like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi have run away with people's money with the help of BJP government," Congress president Pawan Khera said.

Congress alleged that the Centre has written off more bad loans than it plans to spend on health, education and social protection in the current fiscal year. "In the last four years the BJP govt. has written off bad loans worth Rs.3,16,500 crore for a handful of people. This is twice the budget they wish to spend on health, education & social protection in 2018-19," the Congress tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Congress president Rahul Gandhi had also attacked the Modi government over a report that the Centre has written off bad loans worth 3.16 lakh crore. "For Common Man: Notebandi-line up and put ur money in banks. All ur details into Aadhar. U can't use ur own money. For Crony capitalists: Notebandi-convert all ur black money to white. Let's write off 3.16 lakh Cr using common man's money," he had tweeted.

The Congress chief also hit out at the BJP-led NDA government over a report in the Indian Express which quoted a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data and stated that public sector banks had written-off over seven times the recovery amount in the last four years.

Between April 2014 and April 2018, the country's 21 state-owned banks ended up writing off Rs 3,16,500 crore of loans even as they recovered Rs 44,900 crore written off on a cumulative basis or less than one-seventh the write-off amount, the report said.