Disturbing revelations have just emerged in the media about how the Modani joint venture systematically misused the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and the savings of its 30 crore policyholders. Internal documents reveal that Indian officials drafted and pushed through a proposal to invest about ₹33,000 crores of LIC funds in various Adani Group companies in May 2025. The reported goals were to “signal confidence in the Adani Group” and to “encourage participation from other investors.”
The question arises: under whose pressure did the officials of the Ministry of Finance and NITI Aayog decide that their job was to bail out a private company facing funding difficulties due to serious allegations of criminality?? Is this not a textbook case of “mobile phone banking”?
Just four hours of trading on 21 September 2024
The costs of throwing public money at crony firms became clear when LIC suffered a staggering ₹7,850 crore loss in just four hours of trading on 21 September 2024, following the indictment of Gautam Adani and seven of his associates in the United States. Adani has been accused of orchestrating a ₹2,000 crore bribery scheme to secure high-priced solar power contracts in India. The Modi government has refused, for nearly a year, to serve a US SEC summons to the Prime Minister’s most favoured business conglomerate.
The Modani MegaScam is very wide-ranging. For instance, it encompasses:
• The misuse of agencies such as the ED, CBI, and Income Tax Department to force other private companies to sell their assets to the Adani Group.
• The rigged privatisation of critical infrastructure assets such as airports and ports for the benefit of the Adani Group alone.
• The misuse of diplomatic resources to funnel contracts to the Adani Group in various countries, especially in India’s neighbourhood.
• The import of over-invoiced coal by close Adani associates Nasser Ali Shaban Ahli and Chang Chung-Ling using a money-laundering network of shell companies, which contributed to sharp increases in the prices of electricity drawn from Adani power stations in Gujarat.
• Pre-election electricity supply agreements at abnormally high prices in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra and the recent allocation of land at ₹1 per acre for a power plant in poll-bound Bihar
The entirety of this Modani MegaScam can only be investigated by a Joint Parliamentary Committee of Parliament that the INC has been demanding for almost three years – ever since we published our 100-question series Hum Adani Ke Hain Kaun (HAHK). As a first step, now at least Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) should fully investigate how LIC was literally forced to make investments in the Adani Group. That will be well within its powers.