By IANS
New Delhi : Accusing Finance Minister P. Chidambaram of engineering Wednesday’s record crash in the stock market before a substantial recovery, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demanded a probe by a joint parliamentary committee (JPC).
BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar charged that Chidambram had manipulated the market to help out his son.
“It must also be investigated as to who actually benefited from short selling during this fall. The finance minister also owes an explanation as to why he waited for the market to fall before coming out with a clarification,” he said.
The stock market, recording new highs in recent times, witnessed a historic crash in the morning as a key index went down by a whopping 1,744 points – before the finance minister made a clarification about moves to clamp down the market exuberance. The index soon recovered by about 1,400 points.
“It was for the third time that the market had to be closed down due to such a flip-flop from the government and the market regulator (Securities and Exchange Board of India – Sebi),” he said.
“An orderly financial market is the need of the hour and it is a definite responsibility of the government to protect the interest of the millions of shareholders.”