Press Trust of India
Washington, April 16: Questioning the ‘business model’ of long-grounded Kingfisher Airlines for Vijay Mallya’s mounting woes, Finance minister Arun Jaitley has said the airline sector as such is doing well in India with many carriers making good profits. Mallya, the owner of Kingfisher Airlines and many other companies that owe over Rs 9,000 crore of dues to lenders, is currently in London, defying Enforcement Directorate (ED) summons.
“I am not giving a final opinion on it. It could be attributed to the business model of a particular company,” Jaitley Friday said here in response to a question on Mallya, on which he refused to be directly dragged into. “As far as the recoveries are concerned, in this (Mallya) case, banks are taking all possible steps. And whether there have been violations of some penal provisions, the investigating agencies are looking at it,” he said. A non-bailable warrant has been issued against Mallya after he refused to return to India to appear before the ED on three different occasions on investigations related to a money laundering case against him.
Jaitley’s remarks came on a day when the External Affairs ministry suspended Mallya’s diplomatic passport for four weeks and threatened to revoke it if he fails to respond within a week on why his passport should not be impounded. “I do not think it (Mallya’s case) had anything to do with the government because a lot of his cases were also locked up in courts. When he was in India, I understand from the banking sector that almost every recovery, every step, was challenged in court. “So he used the legal process till the date of his departure and then he had to abandon that,” the minister said. A member of Parliament, under the existing law, could lose his membership if one becomes an ‘adjudged insolvent’, for which the bankruptcy law is necessary, he said. Responding to a question, Jaitley said the airlines sector in India is not suffering that much, unlike several other sectors like steel and power.
