On 18^th September, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) dismissed the allegations of stock manipulation against Gautam Adani and his group of companies made by U.S. short-seller Hindenburg Research. In its conclusion, SEBI said that there was no violation of listing agreement or SEBI Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements (LODR).

SEBI made the conclusion on its probe on Hindenburg’s allegations that Adani entities used Milestone and Rehvar as conduits to funnel money, avoiding disclosure as related party loans. SEBI found that while funds were indeed rotated via Milestone and Rehvar, all loans were genuine, interest-bearing, and repaid. Moreover, at the time, the LODR definition of RPTs did not cover such indirect transactions. While an amendment in 2021 included such transactions, it was prospective, not retrospective, therefore there was no violation as per law applicable at that time.

Following the clean chit by SEBI, the Congress party has renewed is ‘Modani’ attack on Modi government and Adani Group. Party leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday released a statement reiterating its 100 questioned asked in 2023 under the title “Hum Adani ke hain kaun”.

In the statement Congress party mentioned several allegations against the Modi government, accusing it of misusing govt agencies and laws to benefit the Adani Group. The specific allegations mentioned in the statement are: “The misuse of agencies such as the ED, CBI, and Income Tax Department to force companies to sell off their assets to the Adani Group. Biased privatisation of critical infrastructure assets like airports and ports for the companies to sell off their assets to the Adani Group, Biased privatisation of critical infrastructure assets like airports and ports for the benefit of only the Adani Group, the misuse of diplomatic resources to funnel contracts to the Adani Group in different countries, especially in the neighbourhood, the import of over-invoiced coal by Ahli and Chang, which contributed to sharp increases in the prices of electricity drawn from Adani power stations in Gujarat, a 2,000 crore ($250 million) bribery scheme allegedly orchestrated by Gautam Adani and seven associates to secure high-priced solar power contracts in India -regarding which the Modi government has refused, for nearly a year, to serve a US SEC summons to the PM’s partner.”

Our statement on the continued need to investigate the Modani Scam in all its dimensions. The questions we raised in the 100-question-series Hum Adani Ke Hain Kaun (HAHK) remain unanswered.

The link to the HAHK series can be found here – https://t.co/5j2qFsChU2 pic.twitter.com/XjeIed7xJP

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) September 19, 2025

While these are serious allegations against the Modi government, all of them are baseless, and most have already been debunked earlier.

Allegation of govt pressure

Congress claims govt misused central probe agencies to sell assets to Adani. While they didn’t name any company in the statement, Jairam Ramesh mentioned about Adani Ports buying Dhamra Port in Odisha from L&T and Tata Steel in 2014. The port was built by L&T and Tata in 2011, and they sold it to Adani in 2014. The deal was announced in May 2014, the month when Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister for the time.

As the deal was completed in May 2014, it is clear that the talks for the deal was going on for several months, as such corporate deals don’t happen in just days. Which means, the entire deal took place when Dr. Manmohan Singh was the prime minister. If there was any pressure from govt agencies on L&T and Tata to sell the port to Adani, it will mean such pressure would have come from the Congress government.

Moreover, L&T and Tata Steel are major corporate houses of India, and have considerable legal strength. They are also among the most respected companies for their integrity. If there were any pressure on them, they would have contested it instead of surrendering. By making the allegations against Modi government and Adani Group, Congress is also making allegations against Tata Steel and L&T, accusing them of not disclosing vital information.

Similarly, earlier the Congress had accused that GVK was forced to sale its stake in Mumbai airport to Adani Airports. But the fact is, GVK was in heavy debt burden and was forced to sale Mumbai airport. Responding to Rahul Gandhi’s allegations in parliament that the company was forced by the govt, GVK had denied any such pressure.

The company had said in a statement, “GVK reiterates that the decision to sell its stakes in Mumbai Airport to Adani, was taken by the management and there was absolutely no question of any extraneous pressure being exerted on us.”

GVK Group Vice Chairman Sanjay Reddy had said, “whatever we did was in the interest of the company and the lenders who we had to repay and therefore, we had to close the transaction with Adani because we didn’t see any light of day with the other investors.”

Privatisation

Congress then accuses “biased privatisation of critical infrastructure assets like airports and ports,” alleging wrongdoing in Adani group winning bids to operate several ports and airports in the country. Jairam Ramesh wants people to believe that such airports and ports were personally handed over to Gautam Adani by PM Narendra Modi.

But the fact is, all such privatisations took place after elaborate tender processes where several companies submitted bids. While ports are privatised at the state level, airports are awarded based on competitive bidding. In case of airports, bidder which highest value for each passenger wins the bid to operate the airport.

Therefore, Adani group won the bids by offering highest value for Indian passengers. If the Congress party has problem with that, it means that it does not want private companies to pay highest value for Indian passengers at airports.

In November 2018, the central government had cleared the privatisation of six AAI-run airports—Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangaluru and Lucknow—on a public-private partnership model. As many as 32 technical bids were received from 10 companies to operate these six airports. Adani Airports won the mandate to operate all the six government-owned airports for the lease period of 50 years. The Adani Group offered ₹177, ₹174, ₹171, ₹168, ₹115 and ₹160 for Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Thiruvananthapuram, Mangaluru and Guwahati airports, respectively, highest bids for all of them.

It is important to note that by winning bids, the company does not own the airport, it only wins the right to operate the airport for the defined period of time.

The Congress party’s allegations on airport deals is not new, they have been repeating it for years, and have been comprehensively debunked. In its 100 questions, Congress alleged that Adani was awarded the 6 airports despite having zero experience in running airports. But when GMR and GVK were awarded Delhi and Mumbai airports respectively during the Manmohan Singh government, these companies also didn’t have any airport experience.

Diplomatic pressure

The next claim of Congress, that Modi govt put diplomatic pressure on foreign governments forcing them to hand over projects to Adani group is most bizarre. It is outlandish to even think that sovereign governments will take commercial decisions based on diplomatic pressure.

However, Jairam Ramesh seems to have forgotten that when Adani group won mining bids in Australia, his own party was in power. Carmichael coal mine in Queensland was handed over to Adani group in 2011-12, when Dr Manmohan Singh’s UPA-2 government was in power.

In 2022, Adani Port won the bid to acquire Haifa Port in Israel in collaboration with Israel’s Gadot Group, which has been considered as a very important and strategic purchase by the company. Adani-Gadot won the tender against stiff competition from local and global players. It was one of the largest privatisation by the Israel government, and it is bizarre to even suggest that the Israeli govt selected the winning bidder on Modi government’s pressure.

Moreover, if there was any hint of any wrongdoing, other bidders in the tender would have gone to court, which didn’t happen. The same is true with bids won by the company in the India, the companies that lost the bids have not accused any bias in awarding the tenders.

Electricity prices

Jairam Ramesh claimed that prices of electricity supplied by Adani power stations in Gujarat increased because of alleged over-invoicing of coal. This is another baseless allegation, because, if price of a power plant is much higher than competitors, it would not find any buyer.

The power distribution companies sign power purchase agreement with power generators, where the price is determined. Power generators can’t dictate price, as the Congress party is alleging. Even though Adani Power is India’s largest private sector thermal power producer in India, majority of power in the country is produced by public sector entities by NTPC and NHPC. Therefore, private sector power producers can’t charge arbitrarily higher prices.

Moreover, Adani Power has supplied power to several states under Congress governments too. This implies that the Congress party is accusing its own state governments of purchasing electricity from Adani Power at higher prices.

Solar power bribery allegation

At last, Jairam Ramesh raised the allegation that Adani group paid bribes of around ₹2,000 crore to officials of several states to sign power purchase agreements with Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI). The allegations had surfaced after the charges were made against the company by a US court.

However, apart from that case in the US, there is no other evidence of any such bribery. ₹2,000 crore is a lot of money, and unless this money is found and traced back to the company, this remains just an allegation.

Adani Group had appointed an independent law firm to look into the allegations, and the review found the Adani Green and its subsidiaries were in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. Andra Pradesh government, one of the states where officials allegedly received bribes, have also said that there is no evidence to support the allegations.

Notably, as per filings by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gautam Adani met with the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in 2021. At that time the CM of Andhra Pradesh was YSRCP chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. In fact, none of the states alleged to have received bribes between 2021 to 2022 were ruled by BJP during that time, all of them had anti-BJP parties in power.

Conclusion

Therefore, all the allegations made by Congress leader Jairam Ramesh are false, baseless, and some are bizarre. Tenders won by Adani group in India and in other countries were result of competitive bidding processes, and there is no evidence or even any allegation of undue pressure from Modi govt on those bids. Similarly, power purchase agreements are signed under transparent processes. And it is laughable to even allege that Modi govt can influence foreign governments like Australia and Israel to decide on major deals.

These are not new allegations, the Congress party has been making the for years, and all of have been debunked earlier. By continuously making allegations on major economic events in the country, the Congress party is attacking not just the Modi government, but also targeting India’s growth story.