Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister, spoke at a news conference in Bengaluru and said, “If Congress leader Rahul Gandhi thinks Adani has been given “all these things”, it’s not true.” On Thursday, Nirmala Sitharaman, the minister of finance, took a strong stance against the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi, labelling him a “repeat offender” and claiming that the party had given Adani Group the Vizhinjam Port “on a platter.”
In his remarks during a news conference in Bengaluru, the finance minister remarked, “If Cong leader Rahul Gandhi thinks Adani has been given “all these things”, it’s not true.” “It was the Congress government in Kerala which gave on a platter Vizhinjam port to Adani; it was not given on the basis of any tender,” she added. Rahul Gandhi won’t say anything about it, according to Sitharaman, who said that “If any crony capitalism is taking place, it is taking place in Congress-led governments.” The BJP leader attacked Rahul Gandhi, alleging that he was making unfounded claims about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was turning into a “repeat offender.”
Moments before Sitharaman made her statement, Mallikarjun Kharge, the head of the Congress, blasted the federal government for not forming a joint parliamentary committee to look into the Adani case. As the Opposition stopped proceedings in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha by demanding a JPC investigation into the claims of violations made by US short-seller Hindenburg Research against the Adani Group, they continue to be at the centre of the first and second legs of Parliament’s budget session.
“Something is fishy that is why the government is not agreeing to order a JPC probe into the Adani issue,” Kharge stated in a press conference. “We are demanding the JPC probe into the Adani issue, but why is the government afraid when it will have a majority in the panel,” Kharge mentioned, adding “Modi government talks a lot about democracy but does not walk the talk.” The leader of the opposition party demanded an apology from Rahul Gandhi for his remarks in London, and the Congress president said that this was done by the government to “divert attention” from the Adani problem.