Just weeks after Ramdev’s Patanjali astonishingly held Narendra Modi’s demonetisation announcement for the adverse impact on its growth, Videocon too has now blamed the prime minister for company facing bankruptcy.
The consumer appliances maker has blamed Prime Minister Modi, the Supreme Court and the Brazilian government for the current misfortune plaguing the company. A report by Bloomberg said that PM Modi’s demonetisation decision in November 2016 chocked supplies for making cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions and forced Videocon to shut the business. In its filing before the National Company Law Tribunal, which has initiated the bankruptcy proceedings against the company, Videocon also contended that its oil and gas business got entangled in red tape in Brazi and the telecommunications venture suffered losses after the Supreme Court canceled licenses.
The bankruptcy proceedings have been initiated after the lenders led by State Bank of India approached National Company Law Tribunal. Meanwhile, Videocon’s shares came down to a new low at Rs 7.56 at 2.10 pm on the BSE on Tuesday. This is crash of a whopping 96 per cent in Videocon’s share prices over the past five years.
Last month, Patanjali’s Managing Director Acharya Balkrishna had blamed Modi’s demonetisation and other economic policies such as the GST rollout for the halt in the company’s growth.
Videocon is also embroiled in Rs 3,200 crore scam involving ICICI Bank’s CEO Chanda Kochhar, who is alleged to have favoured Videocon Group in its lending practices.Videocon’s Venugopal N Dhoot had also allegedly donated Rs 11.1 crore to the BJP.
In his complaint, whistle-blowerArvind Gupta had written to PM Modi, “Sir, the fact that the Videocon Group led by Mr. Venugopal N. Dhoot has made hefty political contribution of Rs. 11.1 crore to the Bhartiya Janta Party’s (BJP) led Union Government during the year 2014, as against just Rs. 5 lakh in the previous year, should not deter the Government to order an appropriate independent investigation to bring out the truth relating to opaque corporate transactions and prevent impending banking crisis in the ICICI Limited. The Videocon Group is heading deep into crisis and will soon become drain on Banks as Non Performing Asset despite the ICICI Bank offering them murky financial supports. This is a serious misgovernance issue and deserves your intervention or else the reputation of the Government will get tainted.”
