RUBBISHING Rahul Gandhi’s Accusation That NDA Govt Helped Mallya Flee India, BJP says Congress Is Owner of Kingfisher Airlines

Stoutly denying that BJP ever helped former liquor baron Vijay Mallya to leave  India  to evade money laundering charges and defrauding  a consortium of  banks of close to 1,000 Crore INR, ruling BJP has said  it is the Gandhis  controlling the nation’s oldest political  party  who  owned now defunct the high profile Kingfisher Airlines. It has made certain documents public to prove the allegation that Mallya was given undue favour to run the airlines. Congress has alleged that fugitive tycoon Vijay Mallya had met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley before leaving India .Rahul Gandhi also called for Jaitley’s resignation and an independent probe into his allegation. Airline appeared to have been owned by “proxy” by the Gandhi family, says BJP’s National Spokesman Sambit Patra at a news conference on Thursday at New Delhi. With Congress chief  Rahul Gandhi accusing Arun Jaitley of “colluding with a criminal” and helping Mallya flee the country, the ruling party hit back with Union Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal seeking Rahul Gandhi’s resignation from all posts for his family’s alleged links with Mallya. Charges and counter-charges were made by the two arch political rivals following Mallya’s sensational claim in London on Wednesday that he had met Jaitley and told him that he was leaving for London.  BJP also displayed a video clip of Civil Aviation Minister in the UPA government Vayalar Ravi as saying that government needed to help Kingfisher.BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra cited loans given to Mallya’s firm during the UPA rule to allege that it had given a “sweet deal” to the beleaguered Kingfisher Airlines to keep it afloat and suggested that the airline was perhaps owned by the Gandhi family.”Sometimes it seems the airline was not owned by Mallya, but by the Gandhi family in proxy,” Patra said.  Rahul Gandhi, who himself is out on bail in the National Herald case, had no right to question others on corruption. Piyush  Goyal at a separate  presser  demanded Rahul Gandhi’s   resignation as AICC President  saying the Congress chief should answer what were the relations between his family and Mallya.”All norms, laws and regulations were passed to help the Kingfisher Airlines and specific instructions were given by the Congress-led UPA government to banks for restructuring of loans for the company,” Goyal said.Goyal also discredited Mallya’s claim, saying he was a criminal who has no credibility. Both Gandhi and Mallya are “playing duet of lies”, he added.The Union Minister  spoke of the Modi government’s efforts to take action against the bank defaulters and highlighted the passage of the Fugitive Offenders Bill by it.  Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad asked whether Gandhi and Mallya were “working in tandem” and claimed the liquor baron had allegedly benefitted from bank facilities by the UPA government. Patra, showing a purported confessional statement of a hawala trader, alleged that the Congress chief had links with a shell company. He claimed the entire Gandhi family travelled on Kingfisher Airlines  and their travel was upgraded to business class for free.”The entire Gandhi family was in fact helping Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines with the sweet deal,” Patra said, while showing a bunch of documents which he said were related to loans given by banks to the airline. Minutes after Mallya’s revelation, Jaitley had yesterday strongly refuted his claim, saying he never gave him any appointment but the businessman misused his privilege as an MP to accost him in Parliament. After Jaitley’s sharp rebuttal, Mallya also toned down the seriousness of his comments, saying it was “not fair” to create a controversy over this issue as it was not a “formal meeting” as the BJP leaders are wondering as to why Mallya and Rahul Gandhi are raising the issue as a London court has reserved ruling till December  on Government ‘s plea for his extradition to face trials in Indian courts.