SC-appointed committee report on Adani Group predictable: Congress

New Delhi, May 19 (IANS) The Congress on Friday slammed the Centre, saying that the Supreme Court-appointed committee's conclusions were "predictable" and all its limitations to spin the committee's report as having given a clean chit to the Adani Group is "wholly bogus".

The Congress' remarks came after the Supreme Court-appointed committee headed by retired judge A.M. Sapre probing the Adani-Hindenburg controversy said there was no regulatory failure in relation to compliance with the regulatory stipulations governing minimum public shareholding stipulation and the "Hindenburg Report contained no new data but was substantially a collection of inferences from data in the public domain".

The Congress also said that the top coourt has limited terms of reference and will simply be unable to unravel all the complexities.

In a tweet, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said, "The Congress has all along been saying that the Expert Committee appointed by the Supreme Court has extremely limited terms of reference and will simply be unable (and perhaps unwilling too) to unravel the 'Modani' scam in all its complexity."

He also said raised five observations for the government over the Adani Group issue and said that contrary to the boasts of the government, the committee has found that regulations have moved in the direction of opacity that facilitates the disguise of ultimate beneficial ownership.

He also said that the committee is unable to come to any definitive conclusion regarding violation of Sebi rules by the Adani Group. And since no definitive conclusion can be drawn on the basis of information it had, the committee concluded that there has been no regulatory failure by Sebi.

Ramesh, who is also a Rajya Sabha member, said: "We wish to highlight these two excerpts from page 106 and page 144, which strengthen the case for a JPC -- 1) Sebi is unable to satisfy itself that the contributors of the funds to the FPIs are not linked to Adani, which brings us back to the question of the unaccounted funds of at least Rs 20,000 crores; 2) LIC was the largest net buyer of Adani securities with the purchase of 4.8 crore shares when the price shot from Rs 1,031 to Rs 3,859, which raises the question on whose interest was LIC acting.

"We wish to say nothing more on the committee's report given the eminence of its members, except to say its conclusions were predictable and with all its limitations to spin the committee's report as having given a clean chit to the Adani Group is wholly bogus."

On March 2 this year, the apex court had constituted the expert committee headed by Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre, a former judge of the Supreme Court, and comprising O.P. Bhatt, Justice J.P. Devadhar (retired), K.V. Kamath, Nandan Nilekani, and advocate Somashekhar Sundaresan.

The Congress has been demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the Adani Group issue. The Budget Session of the Parliament had witnessed several adjournments because of the opposition parties' demand for a JPC probe into the Adani issue.