New Delhi, Apr 29 (IANS): The Congress has hit back at the Finance Minister who alleged that the party is misleading on facts on the issue of wilful defaulters. Congress Chief Spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is twisting facts instead of giving answers.

Surjewala said, "And Nirmala Sitharaman ji, cleaning the banks of people's money by writing off loans of absconders and fraudsters, is not called cleaning the system. It's called weakening the entire bank architecture fiscally and imprudently, if not maliciously."

Randeep Surjewala posed questions to the Finance Minister and said, "Why has Modi Govt written off Bank Loans worth Rs 6,66,000 Cr between 2014-15 and 2019-20? Is RBI's RTI reply dated 24th April, 2020 of bank loans write off of Rs 68,607 Cr wrong or right?"

The Congress leader in a series of tweets posed another set of questions: "Why is Modi Govt writing off bank Loans of absconders & fraudsters like Nirav Modi + Mehul Choksi(Rs 8,048 cr), Jatin Mehta (Rs 6,038 cr), Mallya (Rs 1,943 cr) & others as per RBI's RTI reply of 24/4/2020? Who permitted such huge write offs of bank loans of defaulters & why?"

After the Congress alleged that the government has written off loans of wilful defaulters on Tuesday, Finance Minister hit back and said, "Rahul Gandhi and R.S. Surjewala, spokesperson of INC India have attempted to mislead people in a brazen manner. Typical to INC India, they resort to sensationalising facts by taking them out of context."

"Today's attempt of INC India leaders is to mislead on wilful defaulters, bad loans and write-offs. Between 2009-10 and 2013-14, Scheduled Commercial banks had written off Rs 145226.00 crore. Wished Rahul Gandhi consulted Dr Manmohan Singh on what this writing-off was about." She had tweeted.

On Tuesday, the Congress had alleged that the government wrote off loans of top 50 wilful defaulters including Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi to the tune of Rs 68607 crore.