In the wake of falling Asian stock markets, the wave of panic sailed through the domestic markets even on Friday too. On Friday, the benchmark Sensex plunged by 578 points during the whole day business and remained volatile at the end of the day with a loss of 216.69 points and the market closed down at 14,141.52. The government is cautious and taking serious note of the market response in daily business in Sensex and Nifty.
On Friday, the UPA government said that there was no indication of any ’surreptitious’ entry of terrorist organizations in the stock market or real estate markets to feed their financial demands. On Thursday, the Finance ministry had consulted Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in this matter.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in Lok Sabha in written reply:
The information available to government does not indicate any surreptitious entry into the stock market or real estate market by terrorist outfits.
Chidambaram’s statement has significance as it was made from the government. Earlier, the National Security Advisor M K Narayanan had said in February this year the terrorist organisations had planned to manipulate the stock exchanges to raise funds through a new modus operandi by using the operations of fictitious companies in the Mumbai and Chennai stock exchanges. Narayanan had also revealed that some of these fake companies were later traced to terrorist groups.
