Adani Group: Opposition part of a conspiracy to cause financial instability and chaos in India: BJP on Hindenburg's move against SEBI chief

The BJP on Sunday alleged that the Congress and other opposition parties were part of a conspiracy to create financial instability and chaos in India. The ruling party dismissed Hindenburg's allegation against the SEBI chairman as an attempt to discredit the financial regulator. BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said the short-selling firm, which had made serious allegations against the Adani group last year, was now being investigated by Indian investigative agencies.

The opposition parties repeated his accusation and the conspiracy was now clear: they wanted to create chaos and instability, especially in the financial sector, he told PTI.

He noted that many of these critical reports from abroad were published shortly before or during parliamentary sessions, and said that opposition leaders had been informed of the report precisely at the time the parliament was scheduled to sit.

The monsoon session of Parliament was scheduled to end on Monday but was shortened by one working day and ended on Friday.

BJP leader and former Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the short-selling firm had attacked the market regulator SEBI in an “obvious partnership” with the Congress and had an ominous motive and objective.

It is about destabilising and discrediting one of the world's strongest financial systems and creating chaos in the world's fastest-growing economy, he said on X. He said he had read the report, which he said was a classic “Congress-style concoction of innuendo and lies” aimed at discrediting the regulator and causing chaos and losses in the markets so that investors would curb bullish sentiment. He claimed: “I have said it many times and I will say it again – many global forces, with the help of the Congress dynasty, want to slow or prevent India's rise. We will not allow that.”

On Saturday, Hindenburg Research launched a broadside against securities regulator SEBI chairwoman Madhabi Buch, alleging that she and her husband had stakes in obscure offshore funds that played a role in the Adani embezzlement scandal.

Eighteen months after the damning report on Adani, Hindenburg said in a blog post: “SEBI has shown a surprising disinterest in Adani's alleged undisclosed network of shell companies in Mauritius and offshore jurisdictions.”

The SEBI chairwoman and her husband denied the allegations against them as baseless and assured that their finances had been disclosed.

The Congress on Sunday said the government must act immediately to remove all conflicts of interest in the regulator's probe into the Adani Group and reiterated its demand for a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the matter.

The opposition party also said that the “obvious complicity of the country's highest officials” could only be resolved by setting up a Joint Committee of Inquiry (GPC) to investigate the full extent of the “scandal”.