A day after Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Chairperson Madhabi Buch and her husband, Dhaval Buch, had “answered” most of the allegations against them, the Congress on Tuesday (September 17, 2024) said their explanation raised “even more questions”.
In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said “the facts” put out on their financial dealings had not been contradicted so far by anyone.
“The Finance Minister has finally broken the Union government’s silence on the issue of the multiple conflicts of interest of the SEBI Chairperson. She has said that the SEBI Chairperson and Mr. Buch are ‘answering on allegations of conflict of interest’. But these answers raise even more questions,” Mr. Ramesh said.
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“The question now is whether the Finance Minister and the non-biological PM were aware of these facts since 2022 at least. Do they really think that these facts are trivial and do not, in any way, compromise the functioning of the capital markets regulator?” he said.
Has the Supreme Court-mandated SEBI investigation into the Adani Group really been fair, impartial, and complete, Mr. Ramesh asked, adding, “The last has not been heard on this matter.”
Job crisis
In a separate statement, the Congress general secretary said the first 100 days of the Modi government’s third term was marked by a litany of U-turns and a series of scandals. He said the government had “failed to act on India’s mass unemployment crisis”.
Mr. Ramesh said “the non-biological PM and his drumbeating economists” had consistently attacked the idea of jobless growth but the reality since 2014 was even more stark — “job-loss growth”.
He said the crisis was of the government’s own making, caused by the decimation of job creating MSMEs through the “Tughlakian demonetisation”, a hastily rushed through goods and services tax, an unplanned COVID-19 lockdown, and rising imports from China.
“The final straw has been the non-biological PM’s economic policy of favouring large conglomerates. India’s unemployment rate today is the highest it has been in 45 years, with the unemployment rate for graduate youth at 42%,” he said.
Published - September 17, 2024 08:37 pm IST
