A prominent and popular news anchor has resigned from an Indian TV network that has effectively been taken over by Adani. The ‘hostile takeover’ ends the independence of NDTV India and is yet another blow dished out by the ruthless Adani Group to press freedom in India. The takeover has been lamented by figures from India’s opposition parties.
An association of small textile manufacturers and market leader Reliance Industries Limited are engaged in a fight over import duties on Mono Ethylene Glycol, a key raw material in the manufacture of synthetic fibres.
Bhandari, who the Indian government wants to extradite from the UK, has alleged in court that French firm Thales cheated him through a complex structure of companies, one of which is promoted by a firm founded by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT. The allegations, yet to be proven, find place in documents lodged in a French court. The Indian media has not picked up the story.
Did the government of India know about the link of a “notorious”, “corrupt” Zimbabwean businessman to India’s Pawan Hans disinvestment deal? Ravi Nair, Abir Dasgupta and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta reveal the complex web of companies that links controversial Zimbabwean businessman Kudakwashe Regimond Tagwirei to Almas Global Opportunity Fund, which is now at the heart of India’s Pawan Hans sale.
An attempted ‘interference’ in a legal dispute associated with Mukesh Ambani’s residence prompted an explosive protest by attorney general KK Venugopal before the Supreme Court. The connection has been ignored by the mainstream media although all averments are in the public domain. Newsclick connects the dots in this exclusive analysis.
Competition heated up between India’s two richest men as the Adani Group announced its foray into telecommunications, a sector dominated by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Group. Until recently, the two did not encroach on each other’s turf. But that’s no longer the case. The claws of the oligarchs are out.
The Adani Group has a growing stranglehold over the city of Godda and its surrounds where the Group is building a huge coal-power station. The power-plant complex has subsumed the local police station and there are fears Adani will soon swallow up previously publicly-owned prime real estate in the city. Adani is also supporting a controversial initiative to foster Hinduism amongst non-Hindu children who belong to Adivasi (or tribal) communities.
Soon after it was elected to power in December 2019, a minister in the new government of the Indian state of Jharkhand said Adani’s massive coal-power project at Godda should be reconsidered. Construction was at an early stage and there had been a powerful grassroots campaign against the project. Media reported that the contentious project now stood on ‘less sure ground’. For over two and half years since those comments, however, Adani has forged ahead with construction.
In the eastern Indian state of Odisha, a struggle by tribal people against displacement by a railway that will carry Adani’s Carmichael coal to its power station at Godda has exposed the violation of rights conferred when India became an independent nation. This story describes how this controversy has its roots in an old Indian fault-line between territories governed by the British Empire, and ‘princely states’ – territories governed in colonial times by native Indian rulers. The violation of indigenous rights enshrined at independence in 1947 has prompted leaders to call for a secession of a former princely state from the state of Odisha.
