Ramal Kariyam, a village leader in India’s Hasdeo forests, describes how his community is standing up to Adani and the authorities, despite unwarranted detentions and an arson attack.
Sunita Porte, a tribal leader of the struggle to protect the Hasdeo forests from Adani’s coal mines, tells of her narrow escape from police on the day that other village leaders were taken into custody in the dead of night. While village leaders were detained without charge, the forest was felled by the Adani company.
Alok Shukla, defender of the Hasdeo forests and its people, receives the prestigious Goldman Award, May 2024. Abir Dasgupta interviews him for AdaniWatch. The Adani Group operates a coal mine in the forests and is attempting to develop more, despite the opposition of people who depend on the forests for their livelihoods and way of life.
Chaotic scenes as authorities try to strong-arm village approval for Adani coal-mine expansion. The Adivasi tribal residents of the Hasdeo Aranya forest in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh are dealing with a mix of good and bad news. On the one hand, they have reason to celebrate as an interim order by the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes (ST) Commission has temporarily put a stop to a coal mine being opened in the Parsa coal block, which is adjacent to the PEKB coal deposit.
Fresh evidence surfaces in the decade-long probe into “over-invoicing” of coal imports totalling over Rs. 35,000 crore by corporates including Adani. This scam’s main victim was the public at large rather than the government’s coffers. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) had found evidence that over 40 companies were over-charging for coal that was imported and sold to thermal power plants across the country.
The website of the Supreme Court-ordered Pegasus investigation committee headed by former Supreme Court Judge Justice R V Raveendran has deleted depositions made to it and has started posting spam content. The Pegasus investigation had revealed that thousands of individuals all over the world may have had their mobile phones targeted for hacking using the Pegasus software suite, which is developed by Israel’s NSO Group.
An import-duty on solar equipment that the Indian government imposed following lobbying led by the Adani Group has been a public-policy disaster. The policy was designed to protect India’s domestic manufacturing of solar panels. But it has failed in that objective and slowed down India’s transition to renewable energy. A duty-evasion scheme has allegedly defrauded the government of at least $228 million. The price of solar power in India has increased. More coal is being burned. And associated court rulings may cost Adani Green over US $100 million.
The Adani Group’s listed companies lost over US $15 billion in value during a wider market correction on 13 March 2024 amid warnings from India’s market regulator about ‘froth’ in the stock market. Despite a partial recovery, they once again lost about US $8.5 billion on 18 and 19 March. The Group’s stocks and bonds have all been consistently down over the past month, raising the possibility of a group-wide correction underway. While there have been long-standing concerns regarding the Adani Group’s listed firms being over-valued, in this report AdaniWatch analyses coverage of Adani Group shares by analysts and investment in its shares by mutual funds to quantify how little Indian market professionals trust the Adani group’s listed companies’ valuations. This analysis calculates that Adani stocks are overvalued by at least 32%.
Adani Group companies have been accused of over-invoicing coal and power equipment by an Indian government agency and by the Hindenburg report. Over-invoicing is a practice in which the prices of imported goods are jacked up by an intermediary owned by the buyer. The inflated price is passed on to consumers or is subsidised by government, with the buyer able to pocket the difference. A blizzard of litigation has occurred over these allegations in India’s courts. In early 2024, rulings by the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court appear to have shunted any effective investigation of these allegations off into the never-never.
