The Congress on Saturday asked if a minister in the Narendra Modi government had called up industrialists and asked them to invest in the Adani Enterprises follow-on public offer (FPO) when it was floundering following the Hindenburg Research report.

Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh said in a question addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “Is it true that a high-profile Union minister with longstanding commercial links made personal calls to five-six of the most well-known businesspersons on behalf of Gautam Adani and asked them to invest their personal funds in the FPO to save Gautambhai from embarrassment? Does this not represent a conflict of interest worth investigating? Did this Union minister act on instructions from you?”

Ramesh asked: Were the “family offices that were pressurised to bail out the Adani FPO given assurances that this was only to save Gautam Adani’s reputation and that the FPO would be subsequently cancelled and the money returned to the investors? Is it not a violation of Indian securities regulations to hide this relevant information from most investors and only to share it with a select few? Is it ethical to dupe FPO investors in this way?”

The Rs 20,000-crore share sale was at risk of failure when it evoked only a lukewarm response in the immediate aftermath of the Hindenburg report. But on the final day, a group of investors stepped in to rescue it by stumping up money in their personal capacities.

The FPO was eventually abandoned, with Gautam Adani saying it would not be “morally correct” to proceed with it.

“Among the anchor investors in the Adani Enterprises FPO were the Life Insurance Corporation of India (that bid Rs 299 crore), State Bank of India Employees’ Pension Fund (bid Rs 99 crore) and SBI Life Insurance Company (bid Rs 125 crore). These publicly-owned institutions participated in the FPO despite the fact that the market price had dropped far below the issue price and both LIC and SBI already owned large chunks of Adani Group equity. Were instructions issued to LIC and SBI to deploy the savings of crores of Indians to once again bail out the Adani Group?” Ramesh said.