June 4 Stock Market Crash: Opposition Cries Foul, Rahul Gandhi Demands JPC Probe

New Delhi: As the dust is settling over the Lok Sabha election results, the Opposition parties seem to have been boosted by the close fight they provided to BJP.

A day after it was clear that Narendra Modi will take oath as India’s Prime Minister for the third straight time – with the help of BJP’s NDA allies this time – Opposition parties cried foul over the unprecedented crash in the Indian stock market on June 4.

After Sensex and Nifty hit all-time highs on June 3, following the exit polls which predicted around 350 seats on an average for the BJP-led NDA, the market crashed dramatically the day after when the votes were actually counted.

Rahul Gandhi made serious allegations against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the June 4 stock market crash.

The Congress leader also questioned why top BJP leaders, including Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, made comments about the stock market just days before the announcement of results.

“Why did the PM and Union Home Minister give specific investment advice to the 5 crore families investing in the stock market? Is it their job to give investment advice? Why were both interviews given to the same media owned by the same business group which is also under SEBI investigation for manipulating stock? What is the connection between the BJP, the fake exit pollsters and the dubious foreign investors who invested one day before the exit polls were announced and made a huge profit at the cost of five crore salaries? We demand a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) into this… We are convinced that this is a scam,” Rahul said at a press conference.

“Somebody has made thousands of crores of rupees at the cost of Indian retail investors and the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister have given an indication to buy. So we demand a JPC to investigate this.”

Sharpening his attack against the government, Rahul said this is a broader issue than just the Adani matter.

“It is connected to the Adani issue, but this is a much broader issue. This is directly the Prime Minister, Union Home Minister who are privy to data on actual election results, who have IB reports, who have their own data, who are advising retail investors to buy stock. This has never happened before. The Prime Minister has never commented on the stock market before. This is the first time the Prime Minister has commented very interestingly and multiple times, one after the other, saying that the stock market is going to boom. At the same time, he has information that the exit polls are wrong. He has information that he knows what is going to happen because he has IB data and he also has his own party data,” alleged Rahul.

Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Saket Gokhale asked market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to investigate whether exit polls were tinkered with to affect the stock market.

He said that intentionally skewed exit poll would mean there was massive stock market manipulation which merits an investigation.

“Investors made massive profits on 03.06.2024 after the markets rose on the back of exit poll results. However, on 04.06.2024, investors suffered losses of over 31 lakh crore Le. 31 trillion. In the interest of protection of investors, it is important to determine if the India Today Axis MyIndia exit polls were rigged or intentionally skewed in favour of the BJP-led NDA which led to the unprecedented rally in the markets on 3rd June,” Gokhale wrote in a letter to SEBI.

“The exit polls were clearly manipulated to rally the stock market. Lakhs of crores of investors’ money was later wiped off after the markets crashed. There must be an investigation to determine if pollsters like Axis MyIndia intentionally inflated the exit polls for the BJP. This is important because Axis MyIndia also had BJP as a client,” he stated.

The exit polls fell flat on their face as BJP-led NDA won 293 seats, with the saffron party failing to get majority on its own.