Rahul Gandhi demands probe into stock market moves during polls, calls Modi's investment advice for June 4 'criminal act'

The BJP-led NDA alliance won the vote with a far smaller majority than the landslide forecast by exit polls last weekend.

Projections made by Saturday's exit polls sent stock markets surging on June 3, a day before the Election Commission counted votes and declared results. However, on June 4, the markets came down heavily.

Addressing a media briefing on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi said: "The Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the exit pollsters working for them and their friendly media have together conspired to commit the biggest 'stock market scam' in India. Rs. 30 lakh crore of 5 crore small investor families have been lost. We demand that a JPC be formed to investigate this 'criminal act'."

Rahul said this is a broader issue than the Adani one.

"It is connected to the Adani issue but it is much broader. This is directly related to the Prime Minister of India and the Home Minister who are privy to data on the actual election results, who have the IB reports, who have their own data, and who are advising retail investors to buy stocks," he said.

"Quite interestingly, this has never happened before that the PM has commented on the stock market. This happened for the first time after he said that the stock market was going to boom. He had information that the exit polls were wrong and he knew what was going to happen with the IB data and his party's data," said the Congress leader, who won both the Raebareli and Wayanad seats.

During the election campaign, Modi and some of his ministers had said that the markets would surge when results were declared on June 4, with Home Minister Amit Shah advising in a television interview, "buy before June 4, they will shoot up".

Banking on these statements, Rahul said the BJP knew that the Exit Polls were wrong and they were not going to get the majority.

"Even after this, he asked retail investors to buy the stock. The result is there was a loss of Rs 30 lakh crore and a few selected people gained thousands of crores of rupees. Therefore, we demand an investigation against Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, those conducting the Exit Polls and foreign investors," he said.

He said Narendra Modi and Amit Shah gave the message that the stock market will touch the sky on June 4.

"But Narendra Modi knew that the stock market would fall on June 4, because in BJP's internal survey, he was getting 220 seats. Hence it should be investigated why Narendra Modi and Amit Shah gave wrong information and who are these foreign investors who took advantage of it?" Rahul demanded.

Modi, who is set to be the second Prime Minister after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to return to office for a third consecutive term, had kickstarted the campaign for his BJP setting the target for 370 seats and 400 for the NDA alliance.

Quite contrary to the "Abki bar 400 par" or "400 plus seats this time" slogan, Modi's BJP failed to achieve the majority mark (272) on its own, paving way for a return of a coalition government trend after a decade.

In what would trigger the debate of anti-incumbency setting in, Modi's BJP could manage to get to 240 while NDA touched 293, a comfortable figure to run the government but at the mercy of regional parties like TDP and JD-U.

As a slew of exit polls that gave a clear majority to Modi proved wrong, even in the win of the NDA, the celebrations are louder in the  INDIA Bloc after they bagged a higher-than-expected number of seats. The INDIA bloc has won 234 seats, offering a tough fight to the incumbent.