Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram deny favouring Vijay Mallya

Citing several letters written to them by the former liquor baron, the BJP spokesperson claimed they had helped him get loans to bail out Kingfisher Airlines

P Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh at the AICC yesterday. Pic/PTI

New Delhi: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram yesterday rejected the BJP's allegation that they had favoured industrialist Vijay Mallya in getting loans.

The two senior Congress leaders asserted that letters from the former liquor baron were only among the hundreds of letters routinely received by the then UPA government. Citing several letters written by Mallya to both Manmohan and Chidambaram, Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Sambit Patra alleged that the two had helped the industrialist get huge loans for bailing out the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

Rejecting the allegation, the Congress instead pointed fingers at the BJP and the Narendra Modi government over waiver of loans to Mallya and his fleeing the country.

"All prime ministers and other ministers in any government, receive representations from various captains of industry which we in normal course, pass on to appropriate authority. This is what I have done and done with full satisfaction that we were not doing anything which was against the law of the land," Manmohan Singh told the media here.

Normal work
"The letter(s) being talked about, is nothing else but an ordinary piece of letter which any government in my position would have dealt with. It was a routine transaction," he said while reacting to Patra's allegations.

Rebutting Patra's claims that Manmohan Singh had asked his then Principal Secretary to "ensure help" to Mallya, Chidambaram said forwarding letters addressed to the Prime Minister's Office or other ministries to the officer concerned was a routine affair. "If a letter to PMO is marked down to the Principal Secretary which is then forwarded to the department concerned, it is normal," said Chidambaram.

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