Adani gets reprieve from Swamy

The Adani Group can breathe easy—at least, for the time being. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy, who had tweeted against the group’s non-performing assets (NPAs) last month, has told THC that he is not planning to file a public interest litigation against it.

“I want to focus on politicians who are anyway the root of corruption, the real disease. Wrongdoings by businessmen are just symptoms. I would rather focus on the disease rather than the symptoms,” he told THC in an exclusive interview (https://thehinduchronicle.com/exclusive/congress-move-cji-backfired/).

It may be recalled that in the first week of March, Swamy had called the industrialist Gautam Adani as the “biggest Non-Performing Asset (NPA) trapeze artiste.” He had demanded an inquiry into the Adani Group which, according to him, had Rs 72,000 crore in NPAs. Adani is said to be close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Expectedly, the Group refuted Swamy’s allegations, but the damage was done. The stocks of Group companies got hammered; market capitalization fell by more than Rs 9,300 crore.

The reason the senior BJP leader seems to have reprieved is pragmatic: “I can’t keep fighting everybody all the time. I haven’t taken a penny from anybody in my fight against corruption. There are so many cases that I am fighting.”

In other words, it is the lack of time and resources on Swamy’s part that has helped Gautam Adani.