The Election Commission of India on Thursday released the data on Electoral Bonds bought by various entities from the State Bank of India and the recipients of such bonds. The data was published in two sheets, one gives the details of purchasers of the Electoral Bonds from 12 April 2019 to 11 January 2024, and the other gives the details of political parties that encashed Electoral Bonds from 12 April 2019 to 24 January 2024.
However, sadly for the main Opposition voices in India, the names they most expected to find in the Electoral Bonds list were absent. While it was anticipated by many that Adani Group and Reliance Group would feature prominently in the list, the two behemoths are not even mentioned.
The anticipation was so high that just a day before the publication of the list, Adani Group shares had plummeted, with analysts saying that this was due to panic selling by investors anticipating that the company made significant donations to political parties using electoral bonds. Reports mentioned that panic selling of Adani shares caused the Group’s share prices to fall.
After the usual noise peddlers on social media discovered that their intended target, the Adani Group doesn’t feature in the donors list, they started clutching at straws, resorting to lies and misinformation to somehow find a way to claim Adani was one of the biggest donors.
In their hurry, they found a lie that was already busted long ago, that Navayuga Engineering Company Limited is a subsidiary of Adani, and donations by Navayuga somehow mean donations by Adani.
The same screenshot which highlighted Navayuga was shared by many with pictures of Gautam Adani, claiming that Navayuga Engineering is a subsidiary “owned by Gautam Adani”.
Adani Group does not own Navayuga Engineering
The claims that Navayuga Engineering is owned by Adani are false. The lies had earlier surfaced during the incident of the Silkyara tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand in November last year. Navayuga Engineering was one of the companies involved in the construction of the Silkyara tunnel. Leftists and their trolls on social media had peddled the lie that Navayuga Engineering is “owned by Gautam Adani”.
Many Leftist media portals and ‘journalists’ associated with them had also made the claim. The Wire had cited a past business transaction, where Adani Group had bought stakes in the Krishnapatnam Port Company in Andhra Pradesh, to claim a “link” with Adani.
However, the Adani Group, in a media statement in November last year, had made it clear that they do not own any of the companies associated with the construction of the Silkyara tunnel. The statement clarified that no Adani Group company or subsidiary is associated with the tunnel work and the claims and allegations of Adani owning any of the the companies are false.
Clarification on nefarious attempts to link us to the unfortunate collapse of a tunnel in Uttarakhand. pic.twitter.com/4MoycgDe1U
— Adani Group (@AdaniOnline) November 27, 2023
Some of the fake news peddlers have tried to cite an old JV of Adani Group to falsely claim that Adani “owns” Navayuga. If a large conglomerate enters into a JV with another company for a particular project, they do not become the “owners” of the company. Joint ventures are common in the business world, especially in large construction projects. Adani Group has already clarified that they do not own the Navayuga Engineering company, and the said company is not a subsidiary of them.
Attacking Adani and Ambani has been an old habit of the Congress party and many Opposition party leaders, in the absence of any credible issue to accuse the Modi government of corruption.
