Recent media reports suggest that the State Bank of India (SBI) – India’s largest public bank – is ‘all set to offer’ a billion-dollar loan to Adani’s Carmichael coal mine in Australia. These reports come five years after a similar proposal was scuttled. In the absence of official confirmation from the SBI, the community has re-launched protests against the bank.
Angry at news reports that the State Bank of India is about to loan Adani money for its Carmichael mine, campaigners in the Indian state of Goa have protested outside the bank’s offices. The action was in solidarity with similar protests occurring in Australia and around the world. It is the first StopAdani protest to occur in India.
Rival investors are up in arms as the Adani group makes a last-minute attempt to acquire a bankrupt home-loan company in India. One such investor, the Piramal group, has written a letter to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi claiming that Adani’s attempt violates the rules of the bidding process.
In the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, billions of tonnes of coal lie beneath the ancestral forested lands of the Gond people. This is elephant habitat. In June, AdaniWatch reported on the state government’s proposal to establish a large elephant reserve in the area. The central government of Narendra Modi, however, is seeking to enable an expansion of coal mines run by the Adani Group.
Interview: Senior Chhattisgarh minister opposes Land Takeover by New Delhi for Adani Coal Mine in Hasdeo forests. ‘We oppose any action that forestalls people from exercising their better judgement and tries to take their land away’
In a letter to Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Congress MP Kumar Ketkar has claimed that the government is displaying ‘inexplicable tardiness’ in collecting its dues payable by Reliance Industries Limited, the ‘true licensee’ of the telecom spectrum that is used by its ‘front’ company Infotel, which later became its subsidiary, Jio.
An amount not less than Rs 37,500 crore is owed to the government by two bankrupt telecom companies, Reliance Communications and Aircel. How these past dues are to be paid is a contentious issue that was left hanging in the balance by the Supreme Court in its September verdict in the so-called AGR (adjusted gross revenue) case.
In Sundergarh district of northern Odisha, over 700 Adivasi families are facing displacement due to construction of a railway line that will facilitate the transport of coal from Dhamra port for use in the Adani group’s under-construction power plant in Godda, Jharkhand.
Civil society member, however, feel this is still too short a period for any meaningful public consultations on wide-ranging structural reforms in the mines and mineral sector. Also, it excludes the affected communities.
