Congress Dampening Country’s Growth Mood

The Congress party has still not been able to come to terms after a huge loss it suffered in the last Lok Sabha elections when it could win only 44 out of 545 parliamentary constituencies across the country. The Sonia Gandhi-led party seems to be fighting its existential fight and trying every bit to show its presence in Parliament, even if it means stalling the growth of Indian economy and staking the future of more than 1.2 billion Indian citizens.

The party, which holds majority in Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Parliament, has been obstructing passage of various key Bills which need to be passed to accelerate the growth rate of India.  

When the new government came into power at the Centre last year under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they started with new zeal to revive the sagging Indian economy. Once again, Congress party started halting the procedures of Parliament for one reason or another. During the ongoing winter session also, the party MPs are not allowing smooth functioning of both the Houses. Worst has been witnessed during December 8 and December 9. The reason being a Delhi Court on December 8, directed Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, party vice president Rahul Gandhi and five others accused in National Herald assets case to appear before it on December 19. This is being alleged by them as a ‘political vendetta’ by ruling NDA. But what is this case all about, one wonders.

The National Herald newspaper was started by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938, who also happens to be Rahul Gandhi’s great grandfather. The Associated Journals (AJL) used to publish this paper along with two other dailies. However, as circulation numbers of all of their publications dipped, the company reported major financial losses, which finally led to its closure in 2008. Nonetheless, AJL owed a huge debt of Rs 90 crores to the Congress party, which had been accumulated over a period of time that was outcome of interest free loans extended by the Congress Party to AJL from time to time.

Later, AJL’s assets and liabilities were acquired by a company named Young Indian (YI) in which Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi hold 76 per cent equity. The YI in addition to owing the debt the company paid a further consideration of Rs 50 Lakhs, for the entire share equity of AJL. Thus, AJL became a wholly owned subsidiary of Young Indian. What it got in return is real estate properties worth more than Rs 2000 crore including Herald House, situated at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg at New Delhi.

This case was filed in the year 2012. Moreover, it is judiciary that is taking its course of action and I believe that ruling party is not in any way influencing the judiciary, which is still independent in India. Therefore, creating ruckus in Parliament and holding back proper functioning, Congress is deliberately trying to obstruct the passage of GST, which alone has the potential of adding more than one per cent in GDP growth because of the efficiency it will bring in the functioning of the corporate and widening of tax base.

At the start of the year we were hopeful that most of the important Bills will be passed during the monsoon session boosting our market. It was counted that the Sensex may breach 30000 levels by end of 2015. However, the event did not turnout the way we expected. Although, it moved in the expected direction during the first three months and we touched that point, nevertheless, it faltered going forward. This, however, did not dented our portfolio performance of “Where To Invest In 2015”, which is up by 30 per cent compare to negative return by frontline indices in the same period.

In our cover story we have shared our outlook on equity performance for 2016 along with Rs 1 crore portfolio. I believe that they will again outperform the frontline market, which will give return of at least 20 per cent in the coming year or we will definitely see Sensex at 30000 by December 2016.

Elsewhere in the issue we have covered a special report on new circuit limits introduced by BSE, which will help you to understand the limit of the movement of companies falling under each category. In addition to this, experts from real estate and commodity have also shared their outlook on the respective asset for year 2016.

Hope you will enjoy reading this issue, please send me your feedback on comment@dsij.in