The mask is off.

The veneer of pretence was ripped off the country’s biggest open secret as the BJP on Thursday rushed to defend Gautam Adani, the billionaire businessman so inseparable from the ruling establishment and its talisman Narendra Modi that it has spawned the moniker “Modani”.

As federal prosecutors in New York charged Adani with multiple counts of fraud and bribery and the Opposition back in India demanded a joint parliamentary committee probe and accused Modi of “protecting” the tycoon, BJP national information and technology department head Amit Malviya drew attention to the most fundamental tenet of justice. “It is always good to read before one reacts. The document you quote says, ‘The charges in the indictment are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty’,” he posted on X.

Malviya was responding to a post by Congress general secretary and communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh on the US indictment of Adani and others.

The BJP’s open embrace and espousal of the Adani group only bolstered the Opposition’s repeated allegations that Gautam Adani is an unduly favoured crony capitalist of the Modi establishment.

The BJP also rejected leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of collusion between the Modi government and the Adani group, pointing out that all the states mentioned in the indictment were ruled by Opposition parties when the solar energy deal was struck. The BJP accused the Opposition of pocketing the bribery money.

Never before had the BJP so directly sought to defend Adani, whose business entity has faced withering controversies on multiple occasions in the past. Even in the face of Rahul’s relentless attacks on the Adani controversies, the BJP had mounted political counter-attacks but not offered a protective shield publicly to the businessman.

Modi has also refrained from uttering the “A” word in the face of repeated provocation by the Opposition. The only time he broke his silence was in the run-up to the general election when at a rally in Hyderabad he accused the Congress and the “shehzada” (Rahul) of hoarding black money “sent in tempos by Ambani and Adani”.

Malviya on Thursday went on to draw attention to the fact that all the four states named in the bribery charges — Tamil Nadu (DMK), Chhattisgarh (Congress), Odisha (BJD) and Andhra Pradesh (YSRCP) — were at that time ruled by Opposition parties.

“All the states mentioned here were Opposition-ruled during that time. So before you pontificate, answer on the bribes the Congress and its allies accepted,” Malviya wrote in reply to Ramesh.

The BJP IT cell chief also took recourse to the tried-and-tested “politically motivated” defence, tying the indictment to the upcoming winter session of Parliament and citing the party’s all-weather bugbear — American investor George Soros. Malviya even sought to impute some motive behind the bribery charge against Adani surfacing before Donald Trump assumes the US presidency.

“Don’t get needlessly excited. The timing of the report, just before the Parliament session and Donald Trump’s impending presidency, raises several questions. That the Congress is willing to be a prop in the hands of George Soros and his cabal speaks volumes,” Malviya wrote on X.

After Rahul’s media address where he accused the Modi government of standing by Adani, the BJP fielded spokesman Sambit Patra to counter the charges. Patra, in contrast to Malviya, sought to distance the party and the government from Adani.

“So far as the case against the company is concerned, it is for the company to answer the allegations. The law will take its own course,” he said.

Patra accused Rahul of trying to “damage the Indian markets through his propaganda”.

“The matter pertains to the time between July 2021 and February 2022. Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Odisha — all had non-NDA governments at that time…. The electricity bills of these states were not being generated by the Modi government but by the state governments. So who pocketed the bribery money?” he asked. The BJP leader accused Rahul of running an “international structure” of anti-India players who “want to dent Indian markets”.

“The Congress is unable to tolerate that we are moving towards being the third-largest economy in the world. That is why they are attacking the Indian market and trying to make it tank to damage the Indian economy,” Patra alleged, flagging the losses suffered by small investors because of the market crash after the bribery charges against the Adani group.

In a bid to rubbish Rahul’s claim that the Modi government was behind Adani, Patra asked: “Why did Adani invest Rs 25,000 crore in Chhattisgarh and Rs 65,000 crore in Rajasthan” when both the states were ruled by the Congress?

“On October 19, 2024, the Adani Foundation donated Rs 100 crore to Revanth Reddy, the chief minister of Telangana, for skill uplift. Why did your government take donations from a corrupt man?” Patra asked.