Examining the BJP’s Role in the 4,389-Point Sensex Drop on Election Day. How BJP Leaders Allegedly Misled Investors Before June 4 Stock Market Crash?
The Indian benchmark indices fell over 5 percent on the vote-counting day on June 4. The Sensex declined by 4,389 points. 73 points or 5.74 percent at 72,079.05, and the Nifty was down 1,379. 40 points or 5. 93 percent at 21,884. 50.
The Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi called for an investigation into a stock market crash that affected investors at the end of a general election.
He has alleged that top BJP leaders had misled people by claiming that stock prices would increase as soon as the results were out from June 4. Rahul said that markets went up based on ‘fake’ exit polls and then came down on June 4, after which investors lost 30 lakh crore. A member of Congress, Rahul Gandhi, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of instigating people to invest in the stock before this, which they lost when the market dipped. The BJP, the party in power at the Centre and in Gujarat under Mr Modi’s leadership, has dismissed the allegations.
Mr Gandhi has called for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) inquiry into the alleged scam involving Mr Modi and senior ministers. He claimed that before the 04 weeks to election day, Mr Modi, Mr. Amit Shah, the ex-Home Minister, and Ms Sitharaman, former Finance Minister, encouraged people to ‘buy stocks before June 4 because they predicted that the stock market would go up after that since BJP was expected to win the election’.
Why did the Prime Minister and Home Minister give specific investment advice to the five CR families investing in the stock market? Is it their job to provide investment advice?
Second, why were both interviews conducted at the same media house owned by the same business group, which is also under SEBI investigation for manipulating the stock market?
What is the connection between the BJP, the fake exit pollsters, and the dubious foreign investors who invested one day before the exit polls were announced and made a huge profit at the cost of 5 cr families?
What Actually happened?
In May, PM Narendra Modi had made a somewhat risky assumption, assuring that the stock market would reach a record high on June 4. This news caused interest among investors and political analysts due to prompting news of expected positive outcomes or policy shifts that could affect market conditions. After Modi’s comment, another BJP leader, Amit Shah, said investors should purchase the shares before June 4, implying a sizable upcoming stock movement similar to Modi’s prediction.
People were eagerly waiting for the date approaching in the middle of the month. June 1 saw various media outlets presenting the findings of exit polls to the public, and these findings were early conclusions on the last elections conducted. These polls were based on massive data collection and analysis, frequently using information from BJP’s insiders and intelligence agencies.
The publication of this data was expected to have a relatively strong influence on the perception and behaviours of investors and the markets. Through their abilities to interpret their party’s internal dynamics and Intelligence Bureau reports on security threats, BJP leaders expressed optimism about the forthcoming market performance given the electoral verdict and the consequent policy signals. All these occurrences pointed towards a strategic narrative meant to manipulate markets’ perception and behavior up to June 4.
As the exit polls, a massive stock market scam. Now, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party has addressed a press conference. He demanded an investigation into why the Prime Minister, the home minister, and several others from the BJP advised the people of India to buy stocks and how the stocks moved around the release of the exit polls that we then discovered were utterly wrong and off the Mark. He has asked for an investigation over the connection between the BJP and the alleged fake election, as he called them, and foreign investors.
Is there a need for an investigation to understand that we have to break this up into three bits
The first bit is the exit polls
The four most enormous polls gave the NDA 400+ seats and displayed that the BJP would surpass its previous accomplishment of 303 and do really well in this election. The results also portrayed that the India block would not cross about 50 or 160. According to these polls, saying the polls were off the Mark is a giant understatement. These polls were wrong. They were directionally wrong, they were wrong with their numbers, and they were wrong with the data that they had collected.
But the question is, How were they all similarly wrong at the same time in the same direction and that’s where the question is coming up on results day. We know what happened to the NDA at 293, of which the BJP only did 240 and the India block at 232.
Here are the questions that are now being asked as the pollsters come into the television channels on results day and say, ‘Hey that sometimes, we get it wrong.’ Everybody said yes, but how did they all get it wrong simultaneously?
To answer this question, let’s look at how exit polls work.
Now, exit polls, in theory, are simply this: when people have voted, and they’re coming out of the booth pollsters. People are asked, “Who did you vote for now?” For two reasons, Sanjay Kumar of CSDS tells the Hindu it’s done that way.
There are two theories. One is that people are most likely to tell the truth when coming out of the booth, and their memories are fresh about who they voted for. Rahul Varma, who is a fellow of the Centre for Policy Research and
Teachers at Ashoka University explained that surveys should randomly choose people to answer questions, but the sample size should be large enough to represent the population. It means that you need to make sure that you’ve asked enough people to represent all of the population in the constituency.
One of the theories that’s being offered is that people lied
They were not forthcoming for whatever reason; maybe they were afraid or didn’t tell who they voted for, but could this have happened across the country, all polls, and all constituencies? That draws a massive question. Now, let’s look at how little data and information is available to us about these exit polls.
There’s not enough information about their sample size, confidence levels, and margins of error. In fact, in some cases, their sample size is about one lakh compared to the 100 crore people who voted in this election. It doesn’t seem large enough to extrapolate correctly, but having said that, it must be pointed out that exit polls have gotten it wrong in the past in India and across the world.
Let’s take an example in 2021: the exit polls inWest Bengal said that the TMC would lose to the BJP. They didn’t win; Mamta Banerji won.
In 2020, in Bihar, the polls pointed out that the JDU, BJP-led NDA would lose. It didn’t lose, it won. In 2004, Atal Bihari Vajpayee lost the election despite what the exit poll said.
So why is this one different? It’s different because of the stock market. Now, remember the exit polls came out on Saturday night. Sunday was a holiday. On Monday morning, the stock market went utterly bonkers. It had its highest day run in three years, with the Sensex and the Nifty running up almost 3.3%, closing at record highs. What does this mean in rupee terms? 14.13 lakh CR rupees were made in the stock market game. Gautam Adani’s company shares went up to Lifetime highs of 12.8%, and Mukesh Amani’s shares went up 5.6%, which is in line with the rest of the market.
What happened the next day when those humbling results came out was a bloodbath in the stock market. Where it fell the most it has fallen in four years. It gutted the Sensex, and the Nifty went down about eight and a half during the day to the end of the day at 5.9%. What does this mean in terms of money? 30 lakh CR rupees was lost that day on the stock market. Adani stocks went down by 20%. Across the board, there is something that the market calls. Modi, infrastructure stocks NTPC, Coal India, and ONGC faced a terrible fall. After that, though, the market stabilised to its pre-exit poll levels.
So here are the questions that are being asked now. May 19 to NDTV, The Prime Minister gave an interview, and he said to wait and watch on June 4. The stock market programmers will get tired of all of the action. Also, the home minister to NDTV noted on May 13, ‘I suggest you buy shares before June 4; it will shoot up.’ The Finance Minister, speaking to CNBC tv18 on May 31, said that the BJP will indicate a positive message for the market so that it could go up.
There are some serious problems here that require some questions. For example, first of all, who within the exit poll companies had access to the data of these exit polls, and were they connected in any way to investors? Let’s assume a person is an investor and knows that these exit polls will predict a big victory. That person will know that the stock market will increase, and then they can place the bets within the exit poll company.
The person knows the stock market is rising, but they also understand that the exit polls are wrong and will crash the next day. Also, it brings up these questions. Remember, insider trading is illegal in the stock market if you, for example, work for a company. You can access information about that company that has not been publicly released yet, and you can use that information to make money in the stock market. It is against the law.
Viewpoint
That is called insider trading. So here are the questions that can be raised about this,
- First, who knew about the exit polls, who had access to that data, and were they linked to the stock market? Does it qualify as insider trading
- Secondly, Who Sold stock on Monday and made a profit? It’s easy to find out that information
- Thirdly, who bought back that same stock on Tuesday, thereby making a profit from the movement of those stocks between Monday and Tuesday
- Finally, who would have had access to that information if the polls had been manipulated? Where were the pollsters getting their funding from? Did they have any connections to investors’ political parties, and why did they not make those disclosures?
This information must be asked and answered, which can be done with a possible investigation. Now, SEBI needs to investigate insider trading. Where it finds out who had access to and who leaked that data, and if anybody used that data, it’s not hard to do it. In the past, it was just out of practice. Recently, the election commission needed to investigate the pollsters themselves to determine how and where the errors happened.
And suppose anybody had access to the data from those exit polls. In that case, they also need to look at the possible links these exit pollsters have to politicians, investors, and anybody else. The EC should also, at this point, in my opinion may need to relook at the entire idea of exit polls. Do we need them just two days before the final results come out? Why do we need exit polls other than the fact that TV news Studios get to sell a lot of advertising and make a quick Buck on them? There is a flip side argument, and we give you both sides to every argument.
The flip side argument is that when you have exit polls, it helps prevent voter fraud and gives politicians an idea of how and why people voted. This way, which is why we need them, but in my opinion, exit polls, if we deciding to go ahead with them, need to be a fully regulated activity that is appropriately regulated. It’s not one of these things where people make errors and lots of money is made and lost. They say we made a mistake. What can we do about it? It happens, and finally, there’s no regulator for television channels, and that’s the way it should be.
Journalism cannot be regulated, but television channels need to stop, think back, and consider how they may go ahead now. And they’ve entirely
squandered all their credibility. It is their job to fact check, it is their job to ask the questions. Of course, they have not done so, but TV channels have not covered themselves in glory in the last five years. Based on how they behaved during covid, the CAA protest, or the farmer protest. Right now, it is not looking good for them either, as they continue to function somehow with a complete 100% loss of credibility. So, should there be investigations into this, perhaps multiple investigations need to happen.
