'Rahul Gandhi, family partially owned Kingfisher Airlines

Rahul Gandhi

The BJP on Thursday alleged that the UPA government gave "sweet deals" to fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya while claiming that Congress President Rahul Gandhi's family "partially owned the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines through proxy". "There are documents that show how the RBI and UPA under Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh had given sweet deals to Kingfisher Airlines," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sambit Patra told the media.

"And it appears through these chain of documents that Kingfisher Airlines was owned not by Mallya but by the Gandhi family through a proxy," he alleged showing the letters written by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to the State Bank of India (SBI) requesting for the restructuring of the loans of Kingfisher Airline

The accuracy of the documents could not be ascertained. There was no immediate response from Rahul Gandhi's office. The BJP leader's remarks came a day after Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday demanded the resignation of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while referring to the statement of Mallya alleging that he met the BJP leader before leaving the country.

Patra also alleged that the party has enough evidence which shows that Rahul Gandhi was "using the black money" and the Gandhi family was helping Mallya with sweet deals. He said that Rahul Gandhi traveled free in Kingfisher Airlines, which was once owned by Mallya. "Rahul Gandhi took one crore loan from a shell company, we have the confession of the company director Umashankar Gupta," Patra said.

The BJP leader also demanded that the Congress President "clear the air over his family's relations" with Mallya. Mallya, who left India on March 2, 2016, and is facing charges of fraud and money laundering amounting to around Rs 9,000 crore and fighting an extradition case, had told reporters in London that he met the finance minister before leaving India and offered to settle with the banks.

However, Jaitley rejected Mallya's claim as factually false. "My attention has been drawn to a statement made to the media by Vijay Mallya on having met me with an offer of settlement. The statement is factually false in as much as it does not reflect truth," Jaitley had said in a Facebook post.

Earlier in the day, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters that all the allegations against Jaitley were "false". "All these allegations are false. I want to question one thing, all these remarks are being made after Rahul Gandhi's London visit," Prasad said.

"Is there anything common between them (Mallya and Rahul Gandhi)?" the Law Minister asked. He also said that since 1947 till 2008 the banks in the country gave loans to the tune of Rs 18 lakh crore. "And from 2008 to 2014 it increased to 52 lakh crore. So when Mallya got the maximum loan under which government you all know," Prasad added.

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