A Rafale Redux Moment for Congress
KS Muralidharan
The clean chit given to Gautam Adani by the Supreme Court-appointed expert committee over serious allegations made by US-based Hindenburg Research is yet another slap on the face of Rahul Gandhi, after the Rafale fiasco, where too he similarly went to town pouring muck on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government.
Since the Gandhi scion had to unconditionally apologize before the SC for his baseless allegation on Modi in the Rafale case, will he once again apologize to the people, if not the court?
Given his well-earned reputation as a serial offender, he is more likely to quickly invent yet another issue, in the hope that eventually some mud will stick to Modi. And even with a history of saying sorry, will lie with a straight face that “Gandhi never apologizes.”
What must be more galling to the Congress is that the expert panel did not just clear Adani of all charges but even noted his efforts to stabilize the stocks, which is a far cry from the charge of stock manipulation.
The Adani saga has more important lessons for us.
Because it ultimately concerns us all, we should not forget how the entire ecosystem comprising an influential part of the mainstream media, intellectuals and liberals including George Soros and the foreign media were baying for Adani’s blood, and demanding answers from PM Modi, solely relying on the Hindenburg Report, which by the way was only a so-called research finding by a small, insignificant and dubious company, itself under investigation in the U.S.
Because it ultimately concerns us all, we should not forget how just a few months ago the Congress had virtually ensured a full washout of the budget session in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, demanding a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on this issue, when the matter was already before the Supreme Court.
Because it ultimately concerns us all, we should not forget that the only ones who benefited from the so-called expose was the company, Hindenburg itself, its shady and unknown investors on whose behalf it was short-selling Adani stocks, and the media and the intellectuals for pursuing their motivated agenda against Modi.
Because it ultimately concerns us all, we should not forget that the only ones who lost from the expose was Gautam Adani who lost Rs one lakh crore within a week and $140 billion within a month of the Hindenburg report, and who also tumbled from being the 2nd richest man in the world to not even being in the top 20 list.
Because it ultimately concerns us all, we should not forget that due to the mischievous and motivated Hindenburg Report, Adani’s infrastructure projects got stalled, thus slowing down the pace of infrastructure growth in India.
Because it ultimately concerns us all, we should not forget that the billionaire investor, George Soros was reportedly hand in glove with Hindenburg and since he is widely believed to be funding the opposition in India to oust Modi, is attempting to interfere with the democratic process in our country.
Even after all this, the Lutyen’s media or the anti-Modi groups will continue to rant against Modi on Adani, even if the SC puts its final seal on its panel’s findings, as it will.
For instance, the Lutyen’s media’s soul-mate, Shekhar Gupta valiantly tried to cloak the expert committee’s clean chit to Adani by suggesting that it was more a “claim to be a clean chit”. But in his attempt to “cut the clutter” as his show is called, he ended up cluttering the message! While he praised the committee’s report as it was written with “a lot of clarity”, he was unable to decide whether the report gave a clean chit or not! Reader Alert: Spot the clutter…
On the first question under probe, viz. has there been a violation of the minimum public holding regulations, the report says, to quote: “It is a trite law meaning common knowledge) that suspicion, however strong, cannot replace proof.” In short, allegations cannot be taken as truth.
On the second question of disclosure of transactions with respect to related parties, the report is worth quoting in detail: “The Constitution of India lays down a fundamental principle — all actions of human ingenuity are deemed to be permitted, unless validly made law makes an intervention and restricts it. Such interventions need to withstand the test of being intelligible, being reasoned and not being arbitrary, in order to be constitutionally valid. The rule of law is not that unless explicitly permitted, human action is prohibited, but that unless explicitly prohibited, human action is permitted.” (para 83 of page 122 of the report). So much for Rahul Gandhi’s charge of routing Rs 20,000 crore through Adani’s shell companies.
The report clearly states that on all the three key questions, viz. minimum public holding, related party transactions, and price manipulation, there is no violation of law as it existed them. The only way to pick a hole for people with jaundiced eyes is to blame Adani for violating a law that did not exist then! It is the height of partisanship, nay stupidity, to judge past actions on the basis of present laws.
The expert committee’s report has not only nailed the lie about Adani but also firmly established Rahul Gandhi as an incorrigible and congenital liar.
Should there not be a law of some sort to ensure the nation and politics is not held to ransom by such repeated lies, made, not by some insignificant player, but by the leader of the oldest national party in the country? People of course are the ultimate judge, but democracy can sometimes err on the wrong side, and ultimately the nation will have to pay for the lies of politicians who believe they are a law unto themselves.
The report has also willy-nilly established that the Hindenburg report which labeled the Adani empire as the largest corporate fraud in history, is actually the largest political fraud and part of an international conspiracy against Modi and India in history.
Just when the Karnataka election results gave much needed oxygen to a dying Congress, and to the disheartened anti-Modi clique, the latest twist to the Adani saga has poured cold water over their fantasies about defeating Modi in 2024 by hook or crook.
While they are wilfully deluding themselves about the waning of Modi’s image and popularity and ridiculing the rise of India as a Vishwa Guru under Modi, the Australian President feted Modi as “the Boss” and the US President admitted he is envious about Modi’s popularity and jokingly sought his autograph, while a head of state of another country greeted PM Modi by touching his feet!
To ignore the magnitude of respect which Prime Minister Modi has won, and has brought for India on the global level, and to see Rahul Gandhi and the other leaders in the opposition camp as Modi’s competition, is well and truly the mark of a deluded mind living in a fool’s paradise. But that is because even hell hath no fury than hatred for Modi.
