New Delhi: The BJP trained its guns on the Congress on the basis of Rajan’s statement that most bad loans originated between 2006 and 2008 while the Congress on the BJP because Rajan said he set up a fraud monitoring cell and sent a list of high-risk offenders to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) but nothing much came of this. Rajan doesn’t mention when he sent the list to the PMO, although the fraud monitoring cell was set up in 2016.

Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan’s written submission to the Parliament estimates committee on the issue of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) in banks has triggered a war of words between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with each blaming the other for the crisis which threatens to hobble Indian banks and hurt the world’s sixth-largest economy.

Union textile minister Smriti Irani said on Tuesday that Rajan’s statement clearly proves it is the Congress, and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government which it led between 2004 and 2014, that was responsible for increased NPAs. “UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi led a government that attacked the very core of the Indian banking system. Raghuram Rajan has said that between 2006-08, the UPA functioning led to increased NPAs in the Indian banking structure,” she said. What Rajan has said, she added, is a reflection of not only the ‘mafia raj’ in policies during the UPA government, but also a challenge that the previous government left behind for the nation to deal with.