Beyond trade-offs and extortion, the scheme goes to the very heart of the Sangh Parivar’s long-term goal of an ideological dictatorship. The striking down of the electoral bonds scheme by the Supreme Court was no doubt a blow in favour of democracy and against this totalitarian march. It is this vision that the electoral bonds scheme served.
An AdaniWatch investigation finds that the 2014 election campaigning by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a private jet owned by the Adani Group was not disclosed as election expenditure, potentially violating the law of the land. If payments were made to the relevant Adani company for the lease of its aircraft by Modi for election campaigning, they were not reported by Modi or the BJP to the Election Commission.
Questions have been raised in the public arena about whether Adani Group companies should have been ‘more forthcoming’ about doing business with a legal firm in which Gautam Adani’s daughter-in-law is a partner. This story details 12 deals in which the legal firm provided advice either to the Adani company concerned or to another party to the deal. As a ‘related party’ to the Adani Group, should Paridhi Adani’s involvement have been formally disclosed to shareholders and stock exchanges?
In August 2020, the Ministry invited public comments on proposed mining reforms. In January, the proposal was approved by the Cabinet. Now, in response to an RTI application, the ministry said that of over 12,000 submissions that it received, it only considered those suggestions that were “committed for reforms.”
An anonymous letter written by a civil servant, addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has levelled serious allegations against the multinational consulting firm KPMG’s India operations. In the letter, a senior bureaucrat who claims to be a member of the elite Indian Administrative Service accuses the group of exercising influence over key government officials by, among other means, recruiting their children and relatives.
The government has quietly tweaked rules relating to special economic zones – and the new rules specifically favour the Adani Group. The government recently took a decision to quietly tweak the rules relating to special economic zones (SEZs) which has enabled a company in the Adani Group to reap a bonanza of around Rs 500 crore.
