Congress attacked the government over the fall in the value of LIC's holdings in the Adani Group and asked who forced this pillar of India's financial system to take such a risky exposure to the conglomerate.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh raised the issue as part of the opposition party's Hum Adani ke Hain Kaun posers for the prime minister posted daily on Twitter.
He claimed that with the continuing sell-off in Adani Group stocks, the value of LIC's holdings in the Group has fallen by a shocking Rs 52,000 crore since December 31, 2022.
It is now worth Rs 32,000 crore and the entire profit made by the LIC and its crores of policyholders, which we now know was due to stock market manipulation and money laundering, has been wiped out and caused a major loss for LIC, Ramesh alleged.
Who forced this pillar of India's financial system to take such a risky exposure to your favourite businessman, Ramesh asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his statement. When will you be held accountable for this gambling with the savings of India's citizens, he said.
Ramesh alleged that even as the leading market index providers MSCI, S&P Dow Jones and FTSE Russell review the weighting of Adani Group firms, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) has "failed" to take any serious action to protect investors.
This has caused many financial advisers to advise their clients not to invest in funds that use those indices as benchmarks. But lakhs of hapless investors are still at risk of being forced to bail out collapsing Adani companies with their hard-earned savings, the Congress general secretary said.