In January 2023, New York City-based short-seller Hindenburg Research published a report on the Adani Group, revealing their short position on the group’s stocks while raising concerns about the debt position and the accounting practices followed by the group. The report led to a lot of volatility in the group stocks and eventually led to Gautam Adani canceling the group’s FPO (Follow on Public Offer).
The Hindenburg report instantly led to a concerted attack on Narendra Modi-led NDA government from the Indian opposition parties. The Indian opposition alleged that Narendra Modi has close ties with the Adani Group’s Gautam Adani and that the government is giving undue favors to him. With this attack, the opposition also shared what is likely to be the main line of their attack in a bid to defeat Narendra Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
If the opposition’s line of attack seems eerily familiar, that is because it is. We have seen these similar attacks with similar names before, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections (even before Modi became the PM), and during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and looks like 2024 will complete the trilogy.
2014 and the “If Modi becomes PM, Adani-Ambani will run the country” campaign
Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party and its leader Arvind Kejriwal spent months trying to scare voters with the names of Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani. Riding high on the party’s success in their first election for Delhi assembly, Arvind Kejriwal appeared on every news channel to tell the voters that if Modi becomes PM, the country will be run by Ambani and Adani.
All sorts of allegations were leveled against Narendra Modi by Arvind Kejriwal, including calling Modi a property dealer for the industrialists. Kejriwal also tried to scare people by telling them that gas prices will quadruple if Modi becomes PM, as he will have to hike these prices to benefit Mukesh Ambani. Incidentally, that 400% increase is yet to materialize to this date.
Who can forget Arvind Kejriwal dramatically “breaking open a safe” in a rally and taking out some documents and claiming that those documents contained details of Ambani’s black money. As one can guess, we never saw those documents again after the campaign got over.
All the campaigning against Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, and attempts to scare people with ‘evil billionaires’ worked as well as one expected. Aam Aadmi Party, which was supposedly at the peak of its popularity in 2014, ended up with 4 seats in total and lost deposits on 413 seats, 96% of the seats they contested. Even though the ploy by Arvind Kejriwal failed spectacularly, it seemed to inspire the Congress party and its scion Rahul Gandhi, and he decided this failed strategy is the way to go.
2019 Lok Sabha elections- The Anil Ambani-Rafale election
In 2016, India signed a deal to procure 36 much-needed Rafale fighter jets of around 58,000 crores. As part of the deal, Dassault (the company manufacturing Rafale) had an offset obligation of around 50% of the deal value. So 50% of the deal value had to be reinvested in India, and Dassault partnered with around 70 different Indian companies to execute that. One of those firms they partnered with, was Anil Ambani’s Joint Venture, which signed a deal of around 900 crores with Dassault. You can read all the facts about the deal here.
The deal, and the mention of the name Ambani, were enough for the Indian opposition to make all sorts of false claims ahead of the 2019 elections. The entire campaign of the opposition was centered around these allegations. Rahul Gandhi, the perennial PM candidate of the opposition, claimed that Modi is giving thousands and thousands of crores to Anil Ambani through this deal.
In some speeches, the allegations claimed that Anil Ambani was getting an amount that was double the actual deal value with Dassault. Along with making up imaginary numbers, the opposition also tried to conjure up an imaginary scenario where Anil Ambani was making Rafale jets.
Anil Ambani, who was once among the 10 wealthiest persons in the world, had become bankrupt by 2019, with his brother Mukesh Ambani’s financial help keeping him out of legal troubles. Therefore, while most voters wondered how can Modi be helping an industrialist if he is going bankrupt during his tenure, the opposition kept repeating its lies in the hope of convincing enough voters to move away from Narendra Modi.
Expectedly, this strategy of saying that Modi is personally providing benefits to an Ambani failed for the second time. This time, voters gave an even bigger majority to Narendra Modi-led NDA as they returned to power in style. And expectedly, the opposition forgot about Anil Ambani and Rafale deal the moment they saw in May 2019 that nobody is buying their lies.
2024- Adani returns while Ambanis go missing
Now, with the attack on Gautam Adani and his alleged links with Narendra Modi, the opposition’s election campaign for 2024 has officially begun. Ahead of 2019, Gautam Adani was largely ignored by the opposition as they focused on Anil Ambani. However, looks like Adani is back in focus for 2024.
Adani’s stocks have seen a superb rally in the last 3-4 years on the stock market, pushing him among the richest people in the world, and even second in the world at one time, behind Elon Musk. This rapid rise in wealth, due to the stock price movement, has convinced the opposition that he is the man to target if they want to defeat PM Modi in 2024.
While Adani is signing contracts all over opposition-ruled states, including Kerala, Rajasthan, and Bengal, the opposition is alleging that Adani’s net worth soared only because of the contracts given to him by PM Narendra Modi, the contracts he got after winning open tenders.
Meanwhile, Anil Ambani must be feeling totally ignored this time. While his elder brother Mukesh may appear here and there in the opposition’s campaign, even the Indian opposition must have realized that saying PM Modi personally helps an industrialist who has gone bankrupt is unlikely to get them results.
This strategy of repeating everywhere that Modi works for billionaires has failed twice already, in 2014 and in 2019, will it be the third time lucky for the Indian opposition, we wait and see.
