NEW DELHI: THE face-off between the Opposition and the government escalated on Wednesday after a march organised by 18 Opposition parties demanding a probe into the Adani row was called off after Delhi police blocked the roads. At least 200 MPs from several Opposition parties took part in the march, which started from Parliament House. They were stopped at Vijay Chowk, following which the members called off the march and returned to Parliament.
Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge, who led the march, said the government is trying to suppress the voice of the Opposition inside and outside Parliament. “They have deployed over 2,000 police personnel and we are only 200 people. We are doing a peaceful protest and not harming anyone. We are only requesting them to allow us to go to the ED office and submit our letter to ED. We want an inquiry into the Hindenburg finding and the exposure of LIC and SBI to Adani group. We want to know why the government is helping Adani,” said Kharge. Though the MPs requested the police to allow them to meet the ED director in small groups, the police did not relent. “We were told that the ED director did not want to meet us,” said Pramod Tiwari, Congress deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha.
Later, Kharge emailed the complaint to the ED director, in which he, along with several opposition MPs, demanded a thorough probe into the report of New York-based Hindenburg Research, which accused Adani group of stock-price manipulation and fraud. Reminding the ED that it cannot turn around and abdicate its jurisdiction, the letter said: “Charges related to accounting fraud, the dubious nature of how the Follow-On Public Offer was manipulated behind the scenes, the shocking similarity with Adani’s previous actions for which they have been investigated by your predecessors, are all available in the public domain.”
TMC missing in action
The Trinamool Congress was not among the list of signatories of the letter. The Mamata Banerjee-led party did not attend the march either