‘PM Protecting Corrupt Friends’: Opposition Questions Modi Govt on Allegations Against Adani Group

New reports have cited documents that suggest “associates of the Adani family may have spent years discreetly acquiring stock in the Adani Group’s own companies”.

New Delhi: Several leaders from opposition political parties have hit out at the Narendra Modi government and the Adani Group in light of fresh revelations made by reports from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Financial Times and The Guardian.

The reports have cited documents that suggest “associates of the Adani family may have spent years discreetly acquiring stock in the Adani Group’s own companies”. The Adani Group has denied all these allegations, calling them “recycled” from the Hindenburg Research report.

“Adani’s links with Prime Minister Modi has so far ensured that the regulatory authorities do not take any action against the widespread fraud and manipulation of the stock market,” the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said in a statement. “The fresh evidence necessitates a serious probe and the Supreme Court has to step-in to ensure that there is no cover-up.”

The reports “are a reminder of the lengths and depths to which the PM has gone to protect his corrupt friends and their misdeeds by rendering India’s regulatory and investigative agencies toothless, reducing them to political tools to intimidate the Opposition rather than to investigate wrongdoing”, Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said.

“The revelations also provide some answers to the more than 100 pointed questions the Congress party has asked the PM about his murky relationship with Adani as part of the Hum Adani Ke Hain Kaun (HAHK) series. The PM continues to be silent on these questions of national interest,” he continued.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra – who had been a vocal critic of the Modi government’s refusal to investigate allegations against the Adani Group in parliament – called the ownership of the shares “benami”.

Her party fellow Saket Gokhale said he had written to the Security and Exchange Board of India seeking an investigation into the allegations.

Another party MP, Jawhar Sircar, also raised questions on the matter.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said while SEBI and the Enforcement Directorate should have been probing the allegations against Adani, instead this job had been left to journalists.

Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, said, “Howsoever much Modi may maintain deafening silence about the Adani scam and silence critical voices within India, there can be no stopping the international media.”

Congress spokesperson Shama Mohamed said the reports had provided “clinching evidence” for the allegations levelled by Hindenburg Research.

“Had any business not friendly with the Modi Govt done a fraction of these shenanigans, there would be hell to pay,” said Congress leader Salman Anees Soz.