Your ‘mangalsutra’ remarks have come true, women forced to mortgage ornaments: Kharge slams PM

New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over rise in gold loans and said his remarks during the Lok Sabha polls campaign about ‘stealing of mangalsutras’ have come true with women forced to mortgage their gold ornaments under his rule.

Citing media reports, Kharge claimed that between 2019 and 2024, four crore women mortgaged their gold and took a loan of Rs 4.7 lakh crore.

In 2024, 38 per cent of the total loans taken by women are from gold loans, he said.

In February 2025, RBI data showed that gold loans increased by a whopping 71.3 per cent in a year, the Congress chief said.

“Narendra Modi ji, you had talked about ‘stealing of mangalsutras’. That has now come true. In your rule, women have been forced to mortgage their gold ornaments. First you made women’s ‘stri-dhan’ disappear by implementing demonetization, now due to inflation and falling household savings, they are forced to mortgage their most valuable thing -- their jewelery,” Kharge said in his post in Hindi on X.

During the Lok Sabha polls campaign last year, Modi had alleged that the Congress will take away ‘mangalsutras’ and redistribute the wealth of the people.

Kharge alleged that the Modi government has worsened the condition of the economy so much that middle class families who buy two-wheelers are now unable to repay their loans.

In view of rising loan defaults, two-wheeler financiers are cutting down on lending for the first time since 2019, he claimed.

He said 75 per cent of people buy two-wheelers on loan so that they can repay it slowly, but the financial crunch is so severe that as compared to last year, loans worth about Rs 2 lakh crore are still outstanding till September 2024, which has increased by Rs 40,000 crore in a year.

Two-wheeler sales have declined by 6 per cent in February 2025, Kharge added.

“Recession, financial crunch and reduction in spending capacity - this is the essence of the economy you run,” Kharge said, hitting out at the prime minister.