In an interview released on May 19, Modi talked of the performance of the markets during "election week" and declared it as an indication of his imminent victory in the election. "Wait and watch on June 4; the programmers behind the stock market will get tired of the action," said Modi.

Around the same time in a separate interview, Shah too spoke on the similar lines: "Stock market crashes should not be linked with elections, but even if such a rumour has been spread, I suggest that you buy (shares) before June 4. It will shoot up."In fact, Shah even went one step further, tipping investors the wink and urging them to load up on stocks before June 4, the counting day.

Advice was unsolicited and was followed by the flood of exit polls, which came out in the evening of June 1, after the seventh and last phase of polling, projecting a big win for the NDA. The average of all the polls gave the NDA a tally of 367. The exit polls were weaponised to demoralise the opposition and prop up the hegemony of the ruling party. A baser motive was to make a killing in the stock market by the media-corporate nexus that saw retail investors losing 30 lakh crore rupees on June 4, the day the results were announced.

After announcements of exit poll results, stock markets hit lifetime highs on June 3 anticipating BJP's electoral victory, and they crashed on the counting day on June 4, as the saffron party suffered a massive setback and did not perform in forecast fashion. As the BJP failed to reach the halfway mark of 272 seats, markets howled, wiping out over 30 lakh crore rupees worth investors' wealth in a single day.

Exit polls had overestimated the electoral support for Modi and his party. Therefore, the election results led to turmoil in the stock markets on June 3, after rosier projections for Modi in the general election earlier boosted markets. Three of five exit polls initially projected that Bharatiya Janata Party would win more than the 303 electoral seats it had won in 2019, while the opposition "INDIA" bloc would win 125 to 182 seats. The predictions boosted the financial markets ahead of the release of election results.

However, the vote counts showed much lower numbers - around 240 for the BJP and 293 for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. That caused a massive fall in stocks. The stock market's rise and crash has been rightly referred to by the INDIA bloc as the country’s “biggest stock market scam”.

The verdict was a downsizing of the larger than life image of Narendra Modi, which he, the BJP and the corporate media had sedulously cultivated. If the BJP had taken a hard knock, it was solely due to Modi. The election was all about Modi with the BJP as a party being inconspicuous. Even the election manifesto of the BJP was called “Modi ki Guarantee”. The election result badly dented the aura of invincibility built around Modi.

But it also left behind the “biggest stock market scam” India has ever seen. This raises several questions: Why did Modi and Shah give specific investment advice to the five crore families investing in the stock markets? Is it their job to give investment advice to the people? Why did both Modi and Shah give their interviews to NDTV, a channel owned by the Adani Group, which is under Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) investigations for manipulating stock markets? 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 quickly made huge profits at the cost of crores of investors in the country? It is connected to the Adani issue but it is much broader. This is directly the Prime Minister of India and the former Home Minister who are privy to data on the actual election results, who have the IB reports, who have their own data, and who are advising retail investors to buy stocks. (IPA Service)