BJP slams Vijay Mallya over his letter to PM Modi

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday hit back at embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya saying he has had no change of heart and was not willing to clear his loans as the law is catching up.

The statement comes just a day after Mallya made public a letter he wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 saying he wanted to pay up his dues but had been made the "poster boy" of bank default. "This is not a change of heart that he wants to repay the money (to banks) but the fact is that the law is catching up with those who felt entitled to play with the law," BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said as reported by IANS.

Citing that Mallya was feeling the heat owing to the strict laws like the Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill and Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, Patra compared the letter by Mallya to Modi with the one the tycoon had written to Manmohan Singh when he was the Prime Minister in 2011. He added that while the letter written to Modi showed his unhappiness, the one to Singh thanked him for extending support.

"In his letter to Modi, Mallya said he was unhappy due to CBI, SFIU and ED investigating his case making him a poster boy of bank defaults and public anger. But the one to Manmohan Singh thanked him for facilitating a loan of Rs 550 crore," Patra said. "Mallya has travelled a long way from the king of good times during the UPA era to becoming the poster boy of bank default and corruption," he added.

Breaking his "two years of silence" over the controversy surrounding him in the over Rs 9,000-crore Kingfisher Airlines loan default case, Mallya denied that he was a wilful defaulter. The 63-year-old embattled liquor tycoon said he was tired of "relentless pursuit" of him by "the government and its criminal agencies", adding that he had even written letters to both the PM and the Finance Minister on April 15, 2016 to explain his side of the story.