New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for shielding Gautam Adani after an international business newspaper alleged the billionaire businessman of selling low-grade coal to Indian PSU, passing it off as 'cleaner fuel'.
Quoting the report published by the Financial Times, Gandhi said that a Congress-lead government would investigate the scam. "A huge coal scam has come to light under the BJP government. Through this scam that has been going on for years, Modiji's favourite friend Adani has looted thousands of crores of rupees by selling low-grade coal at three times the price; the price of which the common people have paid from their pockets by paying expensive electricity bills," Gandhi said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
"Will the Prime Minister tell how many tempos were used to keep ED, CBI and IT quiet on this open corruption," he asked. He was referring to an election speech by Modi where he accused the industrialists of sending a truckload of unaccounted money to the Congress leader.
In a report titled "Adani suspected of fraud by selling low-grade coal in India as a cleaner fuel," Financial Times said the coal was sold to an Indian state power utility as Adani group company pocketed big profits at the cost of the country's air quality.
The report said the documents that reveal the scam were secured by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Invoices show that in January 2014, Adani purchased an Indonesian shipment of coal said to contain 3,500 calories per kg. The same shipment was sold to the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution company as a superior 6,000-calorie coal, the report said. "Adani appears to have more than doubled its money in the process," the report added.
