Friday, May 19 2006 14:53 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The stock market mayhem had its echo in the Rajya Sabha today with several members demanding a CBI inquiry into the bull run that led to an 826 point fall in the benchmark BSE sensex yesterday (May 18, 2006).

Raising the issue during Zero hour, senior BJP member S S Ahluwalia said the market fall led to a loss of whopping Rs 2,25,000 crore due to erosion of market capitalisation.

He charged that the release of an old 1989 CBDT circular was the reason for the bull run leading to a kind of price manipulation.

"Serious cognisance should be taken of this point and an inquiry ordered to go into the reasons for the 'manipulation," he said.

Ahluwalia felt that the bull run was due to large speculative FII inflow in to the stock market and this would have been checked if the recommendations of JPC on securities scam had been implemented.

He was joined by Dinesh Trivedi, Trinamool Congress, who said it was not a partisan issue and wanted a CBI inquiry into the market crash.

Noting that the Finance Minister P Chidambaram had described the market fall as a 'manufactured crisis by the media', he asked whether the Finance Minister and CBDT were not responsible for digging out an old 1989 CBDT circular and releasing it to the press.

Matin Sarkar, CPI(M) said it was a matter of concern and against national interests that Chidambaram has assured that FIIs would not be taxed which indicated that the UPA Government was acting on the dictates and pressures from United States and multinationals.