Opposition arises more questions on Adani and accused PM Narendra Modi of helping Gautam Adani’s business empire across sectors, prompting emphatic rebuttals from the ruling BJP.
And Adani crisis ignites fuel for more protests in the streets. Hundreds of members of India’s opposition parties took to the streets to press for a probe into allegations by a U.S. short-seller against the conglomerate which triggered its market rout.
Protesters on Monday also expressed anger about investments made by state-backed Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) (LIFI.NS) and State Bank of India (SBI) (SBI.NS) in the Group.
Earlier last month, an explosive report by a US research firm Hindenburg Research caused tremors in the Indian stock markets after it accused the Adani Group of manipulating its share prices and committing accounting fraud.
According to Forbes’ estimates, with a current net worth of $60.6 billion (up $1.2 billion, 2.01%), Gautam Adani ranks as the 17th richest person in the world. Adani’s wealth has decreased more than half from $126.4 billion before Hindenburg’s charges became public on January 24.
The billionaire and Modi are from the same state and Adani has repeatedly denied allegations by Modi’s opponents that he had benefited from their close ties. Modi’s government too has denied allegations of favouring Adani.
At New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, a Mughal-era observatory that doubles up as a protest site for all causes, protesters held up banners and shouted slogans against Adani. Some broke through barricades, forcing the police to detain them.
Global rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s on Tuesday said banks’ exposure to Adani group is not large enough to affect their credit quality, and bank ratings are driven by expectations that they would receive ‘extraordinary’ sovereign support, if needed.
“Fitch Ratings believes that Indian banks’ exposure to the Adani group is insufficient in itself to present a substantial risk to the banks’ standalone credit profiles,” the rating agency said in a note.Moody’s stated that although the exposures to Adani group are larger for public sector banks than for private sector banks, they are smaller than 1 per cent of total loans for most banks.
