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‘Geo… Jeeoh.’ The constable from the Special Cell of the Delhi Police who was interrogating me that afternoon was finding it difficult to pronounce his proper name. I gently butted in. ‘It’s spelt Geoff but pronounced Jeff.’ ‘You have been speaking to this person in Australia?’ he asked. ‘Yes. Of course, I have,’ I explained. ‘He runs a website called AdaniWatch and I am a contributor to the website.’ The constable had earlier asked me two questions: ‘Do you use Signal?’ I promptly replied ‘yes’...

A feisty opposition woman member of India’s Parliament has vowed to continue her scrutiny of the links between PM Narendra Modi and the Adani Group, despite attacks on her by a government member. Mahua Moitra has been dragged before the parliamentary Ethics Committee for alleged misdemeanours. She has responded defiantly, saying the BJP has picked the ‘wrong person’ to bully. Many of her questions in parliament pertain to Adani’s business operations. A hearing of the Committee on 2 November...

Palestine and Israel continue to dominate the news cycle. Then one learns that several Members of Parliament and leaders belonging to political parties opposed to the ruling regime in this country, those working in the office of Rahul Gandhi, a few individuals apparently on the other side of the divide, not to mention a few journalists, including Siddharth Varadarajan, one of the founding editors of The Wire, Anand Mangnale and Ravi Nair of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project...

Which Indian hasn’t heard of Chyawanprash? Who hasn’t tasted Churan before or after a meal? The first is an ancient dietary supplement that is a mixture of sugar, honey, ghee, amla, sesame oil, and various berries, herbs, and spices. Churan is a sweet and tangy blend of natural ingredients that helps digestion. The pioneer in making and selling these two products is Shree Baidyanath Ayurved Bhawan Private Limited, the flagship company of the Baidyanath Group. Baidyanath is the oldest name in the...

Over the past few years, Adani Power Mundra Limited (APML) and the state government of Haryana have been embroiled in a dispute over a power purchase agreement. After the dispute reached the courts, it seemed that it would be resolved. However, that has not happened. During the scorching heatwave that gripped Haryana in the summer of 2022, a power company of the Adani Group was accused of deviating from its contractual obligations by delivering a lower quantity of electricity to the state’s...

In April 2023, discussions took place for India’s third-largest cement producer, Shree Cements, to acquire a smaller cement firm, Sanghi Industries. On 21 June, the Income Tax Department in the Ministry of Finance conducted search-and-seizure raids at five locations in the country where Shree Cements had offices and manufacturing plants. On 19 July, Shree Cements abruptly withdrew from the race to acquire Sanghi Industries. On August 3, the Adani company Ambuja Cements succeeded in a bid to take...

A recent column by Bloomberg Opinon’s Andy Mukherjee focussed attention on potential issues of conflict of interest arising out of the position held by Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani’s daughter-in-law Paridhi Adani in a top Indian law firm that frequently advises companies in the Adani Group. On 2 September, AdaniWatch examined this issue further, detailing 12 cases in which Paridhi’s law firm had advised on major deals between Adani companies and other parties. In this story, AdaniWatch...

A recent column by Bloomberg Opinon’s Andy Mukherjee focussed attention on potential issues of conflict of interest arising out of the position held by Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani’s daughter-in-law Paridhi Adani in a top Indian law firm that frequently advises companies in the Adani Group. In this article, AdaniWatch asks why the group appears not to have disclosed potential conflicts of interest in certain major deals. The absence of disclosure could impact the interests of minority...

Book: Shadows At Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century Author: Joya Chatterji Published by: Viking Price: Rs 1299 This is a history teacher’s magnum opus. Running into almost 850 pages, the book is a sprawling, impressionistic, and opinionated journey through a century and half of the trajectories of countries in the Indian subcontinent, mixing personal diaries and anecdotes with historical accounts and analyses. As the author herself describes at the outset, the “structure of the book is...

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: When India’s premier police investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), started a probe into the June 2 Balasore train tragedy, it was termed as an attempt by the Narendra Modi government to find a “political solution” to the inherent technical shortcomings in the country’s railway system that had caused the man-made disaster. Less than 48 hours after the accident, which left at least 275 people dead and 1,000 injured, Union Minister of Railways...