Rahul Gandhi: India Congress leader accuses Modi of stock market scam

However, the results were drastically different from these predictions, with the BJP failing to reach the halfway mark on its own and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) getting just 293 seats.

Mr Gandhi has now claimed that the exit polls were “fake” and that the BJP knew that it was not going to win more that 220 seats “from its internal survey and the feedback from the intelligence agencies”.

“Despite that, the exit polls were made to show that the BJP was winning a large number of seats,” Mr Gandhi alleged.

This, he alleged, led to massive buying of stocks on 3 June.

When the results came out the next day, the Indian stock market saw one of its worst crashes in years, with investments worth billions of dollars being wiped out.

The BJP’s Mr Goyal said that it was Indians who gained from the rise and fall in stock prices, since in April and May, when the market was on an upswing, foreign investors had sold shares which Indians had bought.

And this happened again on 4 June, when the market crashed, he said.

“So foreigners bought at a high price and sold at a low price. Indian investors sold at a high price and bought at a low price. So in a way, Indian investors earned even in this period. No one suffered a loss,” he said.

On Friday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that Mr Goyal’s explanation was “rubbish” and added that it did not answer specific questions raised by Mr Gandhi.

The BJP has not responded to Mr Ramesh’s allegations.