Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said on Friday the people of the country should think about what was happening in the name of democracy if the Opposition cannot ask why the financial scandals of the Adani group are not being investigated.

Exasperated at the refusal of the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar to allow any critical references about Adani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in parliamentary records, Kharge said: “Questions will be asked both inside Parliament and outside it. The Modi government is conspiring to suppress the truth by exerting undue pressure on the presiding officers of both Houses of Parliament.”

To ensure that the questions are not obliterated from people’s minds and the national discourse in the “Mitr Kaal” that has come after seven decades of Independence, Kharge asked them at a news conference at the party headquarters, far away from the jurisdiction of Birla and Dhankhar. The questions were as follows:

(i) Should there not be an inquiry into the Adani scams?

(ii) Shouldn’t the falling value of LIC’s money, invested in Adani’s companies, be questioned?

(iii) Shouldn’t questions be asked about the Rs 82,000- crore loans given to Adani by SBI and other banks?

(iv) Shouldn’t it be asked why Rs 525 crore of LIC and SBI were invested in the Adani FPO despite an over 32 per cent fall in Adani’s shares?

(v) Shouldn’t questions be asked why the value of LIC and SBI shares fell by more than Rs 1 lakh crore in the stock market?

(vi) Shouldn’t it be asked who the thousands of crores of rupees pouring into Adani’s companies from tax havens abroad belong to?

(vii) Did Modi secure contracts for Adani in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh? In which other countries did the Prime Minister help Adani?

(viii) Is it a fact that France’s TotalEnergies has stopped the $50-billion investment in Adani’s company pending completion of the investigation against the group? Has the world’s largest equity investor, Norway Sovereign Fund, sold all Adani shares worth $200 million? Has MSCI downgraded the ranking of Adani’s companies? Have Standard Chartered, Citigroup, Credit Suisse stopped lending against Adani’s dollar bonds? Has Dow Jones removed Adani’s company from its ‘Sustainability Indices’?

(ix) What is the reason that Modi and his government does not allow even the utterance of the word “Adani” in Parliament?

(x) Why is it that RBI, SEBI, ED, SFIO, the corporate affairs ministry, income tax department and CBI, all have suffered paralysis, and have closed their eyes in the name of investigation against Adani?

Kharge said the country wants answers to these questions and wondered why the Modi government was refusing to order an inquiry. He indicated the Congress would continue to democratically resist the attempts by the presiding officers to expunge the arguments of Opposition leaders “in violation of” Rules of Procedure in Parliament.

Although the Congress usually avoids confrontation with the presiding officers, senior leaders believe what they have witnessed in the past few days was the worst and even BJP-appointed Speakers and Chairpersons did not behave like this in the past.

Kharge said: “In my 51- year experience in Parliament and Assemblies, I never had this kind of experience. My words and arguments were never expunged. But now even poems aren’t spared.”

The party’s communications chief, Jairam Ramesh, said of Dhankhar: “Yesterday, the chairman of the Rajya Sabha chided the Leader of Opposition (Kharge) for not elevating the level of debate. He is of course silent at the way the Jagadguru of Jhooth debased it completely with cheap personal swipes at his opponents. Chanting Modi-Chalisa doesn’t elevate debates.”

Ramesh also asked his promised three questions to Modi under the HAHK (Hum Adani Ke Hain Kaun) series:

(1) The three farm laws you enacted in September 2020 met widespread opposition from the farmers of India, which forced you to repeal the black laws in November 2021.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the farm laws would have been Adani Agri Logistics. But even in the absence of the farm laws, Adani has become the major beneficiary of the Food Corporation of India’s silo contracts, the most recent award being one to set up 3.5 lakh metric tonnes of storage in UP and Bihar. Meanwhile, Adani Farm-Pik has built a near-monopoly in apple procurement in Himachal Pradesh. Is there any sector of Indian agriculture that you have not tried to hand over to the Adani group?

(2) Renewable energy is yet another promising sector whose main goal for you seems to be to help Adani. On 14 June 2022, the Adani group announced that it would invest $50 billion in green hydrogen in a strategic alliance with France’s TotalEnergies. Lo and behold, on 4 January 2023, the Union cabinet approved the National Green Hydrogen Mission with an outlay of Rs 19,744 crore to subsidise Adani. TotalEnergies has since suspended its participation in this venture, but is there any Adani business announcement that is not followed up with a major taxpayer-funded subsidy?

(3) You successfully handed over six out of six airports to the Adani group in 2019 by removing the condition that no single operator would be given more than two airports. In your ‘Mitr Kaal’ budget speech on February 1, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that 50 more airports, heliports and water aerodromes would be revived in the next stage. How many of these will Adani end up winning? Will you restore the UPA-era rule that limited the number of airports a single operator would be given to ensure competition, or will you continue to expand Adani’s airports’ monopoly?