'Adani Bachao syndicate' in full swing, warns Rahul

NT Correspondent New Delhi: The buzz in India’s corporate circles is that Sebi chief Madhavi Buch is protecting Gautam Adani, his valuation and his reputation, the Congress alleged on Monday. The accusations were levelled against Buch, the chief of India’s stock markets regulator Sebi, in a video posted on Rahul Gandhi’s YouTube channel. The video features him and the Congress’s media and publicity department head Pawan Khera in which they talk about the alleged conflicts of interest of Buch. “Corporate world mein yeh bata chal rahi hain [the buzz is that] she is blackmailing the government, she is blackmailing the prime minister,” Khera said in the video.

“So she is basically protecting him, his valuation, his reputation,” Rahul Gandhi replied. “Institutional collapse has now given way to a more dangerous form of cronyism -- Adani Bachao,” Rahul said in the video. “The current regime is no longer merely encouraging monopolies, it’s actively concentrating the nation’s wealth in the hands of a few.” Buch on Thursday skipped a meeting called by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament to review the functioning of the regulatory body, citing “pressing reasons”.

PAC chairperson and Congress leader K.C. Venugopal postponed the meeting, leading to a war of words with the BJP members who accused Venugopal of taking unilateral decisions. The Buch scandal goes deeper than imagined, Rahul said in the video, adding that maybe Buch, entrusted with safeguarding retail investors, has been manipulating the system to protect Adani’s interests and his inflated valuations. Those entrusted with protecting common Indians and their investments have abrogated their responsibilities and are indulging in wide scale corruption and malpractice, he alleged.