Top opposition leader in India, Rahul Gandhi, has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of favouring Adani group.
Gandhi launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, March 25, 2023. Gandhi stated that he was being targeted because he has raised serious questions about Modi’s relationship with the Indian business conglomerate, Adani Group.
Gandhi stressed that the objective of his expulsion from Parliament on Friday, March 24, 2023, was to prevent him from speaking in the legislature about his allegation of an infusion of an unaccounted $3 billion into shell companies owned by the Adani Group, headed by Gautam Adani.
“Some of these defense companies are working in drone and missile development and ordnance production. Why is the Defense Ministry not asking questions?”
Rahul Gandhi
Gandhi accused Prime Minister Modi of helping the Adani Group to get contracts in India, Sri Lanka, and Australia. He also alleged that a Chinese national was involved in investments in Adani’s shell companies.
“Why is nobody asking the question, who this Chinese national is? Nobody knows where this money has come from. Adani couldn’t generate this money.”
Rahul Gandhi
Gandhi demanded a parliamentary committee probe following a report by Hindenburg Research, the U.S. financial research firm, accusing the Adani Group of stock price manipulation and fraud running into billions of dollars.
The Adani Group has denied any wrongdoing and the Modi government has not accepted a call for a parliamentary investigation.
Gandhi was expelled from Parliament a day after a court convicted him of defamation and sentenced him to two years in prison for mocking the surname Modi in an election speech.
A court in the western Indian city of Surat sentenced Gandhi to two years in prison on Thursday, March 23, 2023. However, he will not go to jail immediately as the court granted bail for 30 days to file an appeal against the verdict.
The court convicted Gandhi for a 2019 speech in which he asked, “Why do all thieves have Modi as their surname?” Gandhi then referred to three well-known and unrelated Modis in the speech; a fugitive Indian diamond tycoon, a cricket executive banned from the Indian Premier League tournament and the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
The actions against Rahul Gandhi, the great-grandson of India’s first Prime Minister, were widely condemned by opponents of Modi as the latest assaults against democracy and free speech by a ruling government seeking to crush dissent.
Removing Gandhi from politics delivered a major blow to the opposition party he led ahead of next year’s national elections.
Gandhi Not Bothered About Losing Parliamentary Seat
Rahul Gandhi asserted that he was not bothered about losing his seat in Parliament. “My job is to defend the institutions of the country and the voice of people,” he added.
Gandhi did not indicate how soon his legal team will approach an appeals court seeking to overturn his conviction so he could save his seat in Parliament.
Soon after Gandhi’s news conference, Ravi Shankar Prasad, a top leader of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, rejected Gandhi’s accusations and said that his disqualification from Parliament had nothing to do with the Adani Group controversy.
Since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, Gautam Adani’s net worth has shot up nearly 2,000% to $125 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. Adani surpassed Amazon Boss, Jeff Bezos to briefly become the world’s second richest man in September, 2022 after a surge in the value of his seven listed entities.
Adani’s businesses have won multibillion-dollar contracts to build ports, highways and power plants. The industrialist’s ambitions include developing drones and ammunition, key to the government’s goal of boosting military-related exports to $5 billion while slashing costs for expensive imports.
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