From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi thrashed Prime Minister Modi over the ongoing Adani row in an hour-long participation in the Lok Sabha on debate on the motion of thanks to the President for her address to Parliament’s joint session on January 31.
He concluded asking pointed questions to Modi to tell the House in his reply to the debate on how many he carried Gautam Adani with him on the foreign trips or when Adani joined him later and how many times he got foreign contracts to Adani.
Rahul claimed a score of shell companies of Adani abroad and wanted to know what action has been taken in this regard by the government, particularly when they threaten the national security. He brought into focus Adani within two hours of the focus shifting from him after three days of Parliament adjournment.
He also wanted to know how much Adani gave to the Bharatiya Janata Party in the electoral bonds and said Harvard or other university should do the case study of politics and business to show how one in power can boost soneone’s business.
Rahul started with his experience of the Bharat Jodo Yatra and noted that the President’s address did not talk about unemployment, inflation and farmers’ woes that the people mentioned to him throughout the country during his Yatra. He said people everywhere told him how they are suffering due to the government policies.
Noting that the President dismissed “Agniveer” scheme in just one sentence in her address, he said the defence personnel told him that the scheme has not come from the Army but from the RSS and some even talked of the hand of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval in floating the idea.
Rahul said everywhere he went during the yatra, the people not only talked of their problems but also about Adani, asking him about Adani’s success story and what are his relations with PM Modi. When he displayed a poster of Modi and Adani, an angry Speaker Om Birla told him to confine to the President’s address or else the other side will also show the Rajasthan chief minister of Congress. Birla is himself also from Rajasthan.
An unfazed Congress leader said the Modi government had tweaked rules to favour his industrialist friend Gautam Adani to get him businesses in eight sectors, including defence, airports, power and what not. He said the rules require experience but Adani got the contracts of airports and defence without any experience.
He pointed out how GVK company was pressurised to hand over the most strategic Mumbai airport to Adani, who today controls 30% of the shares of the airports in the country. He also referred to how Modi pressurised Bangladesh power company to hand over 15,000 MW power plant to Adani and the wind power in Srilanka to Adani.
Law Minister Kiren Rijiju and former law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad as also MoS Arjun Meghwal repeatedly intervened and the BJP members protested over Rahul dragging name of PM Modi and quoted the rule that he will have to authenticate the “wild” charges.
“People want to know about Modi-Adani relationship. Rules were overlooked to favour Adani,” Rahul Gandhi said. “From Tamil Nadu, Kerala to Himachal Pradesh we have been listening one name everywhere ‘Adani’. Across the entire country, it’s just ‘Adani’, ‘Adani’, ‘Adani’…people used to ask me that Adani enters any business and never fails. Youth asked us that Adani is now in 8-10 sectors & that how his net worth reached $140 billion from $8 billion from 2014 to 2022,” he went on to add.
