Powertrip: Adani jitters for state governments

Following the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s shocking loss in Maharashtra and resultant concerns about discrepancies during the elections, we found out what civil society groups as well as the Congress are planning to do. Meanwhile, some Chief Ministers are struggling to deal with the fallout of the US indictment of business mogul Gautam Adani.

This is Powertrip, exclusively curated for TNM and NL subscribers by Dhanya Rajendran, Shabbir Ahmed, and Pooja Prasanna.

. Inside Track Exclusive stories, for your eyes only Maharashtra conundrum

The Maharashtra election results have shocked the India bloc after the Mahayuti secured a dominant victory. The Mahayuti, led by the BJP, Shiv Sena (Shinde faction), and Ajit Pawar’s NCP, won 204 seats while the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA), consisting of the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP faction, managed 84 seats.

Civil society groups, including the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), have flagged concerns about two discrepancies during the elections.

The first is that the provisional voter turnout data, which is published around 11 pm on the polling day, differs vastly from the final tally. While the provisional voter turnout at 5 pm on polling day was 58.22 percent, it was revised to 65.02 percent by 11.30 pm. By the next day, which is 24 hours after polling, the voter turnout was revised to 66.05 percent. Civil society groups have been questioning how there was a 7.83 percent jump while normally the difference would be between 1-2 percent.

The second question is regarding the total number of votes polled. The Election Commission of India (ECI) reported a final vote count of 64,088,195 votes (30,649,318 female; 33,437,057 male; 1,820 others). However, the total votes counted stand at 64,592,508 — exceeding the reported votes polled by 504,313. This difference remains unexplained now.

Now despite this most of the former bureaucrats and activists who are part of groups such as the CCG are of the opinion that there is no point approaching the courts. A few months ago, the Supreme Court struck down a request for counting all VVPAT slips and also to declare all polling data. A senior retired bureaucrat told us that they have lost faith in the court, the media, and the opposition. Therefore, most of them are of the opinion that approaching courts would yield no results.

The Congress, however, says they are putting together evidence to either approach the court or the ECI. After the Haryana loss, the Congress had approached the ECI with complaints of battery-related EVM malfunction. The ECI dismissed the charges as baseless. This time around, Congress leaders say that they have reasons to believe that there was foul play in the Maharashtra elections. A senior leader said the party’s contention is with the margin of loss, which does not tally with multiple surveys the party continuously conducted. But rather than once again make its concerns public, only to be dismissed as conspiracies of a losing party, the Congress wants to gather credible evidence to refute the ECI’s argument that polling done using EVMs is tamper-proof.

Adani jitters

To be friends with Gautam Adani or not? How much business to do with Gautam Adani? These seem to be the questions haunting Chief Ministers like Revanth Reddy and MK Stalin these days. In June, Powertrip broke the story that Adani made a 4-hour pit-stop in Chennai to meet key officials in the TN government. This has now become a bone of contention, with PMK leader Ramadoss questioning Stalin about the meeting.

DMK sources say that the party is a bit jittery about the meeting as the US indictment mentions meetings that Adani had with former Andhra Pradesh CM Jagan Mohan Reddy and says that the bribes were promised in these meetings. Though the DMK leaders say they are confident that no one from the party will feature in the US indictment, they are unhappy over questions on the meeting as it could lead to problems in the future.

Meanwhile, Telangana CM Revanth Reddy has had to swallow a bitter pill and announced that he is returning the Rs 100 crore CSR donation pledged by the industrialist for the Young India Skills University in the state. When Revanth had accepted the donation on October 18, there was criticism from BRS, the opposition party in Telangana, asking why Revanth cosied up to Adani while his boss Rahul Gandhi constantly attacked the business mogul.

In fact, two weeks ago we wrote on Powertrip how the Congress high command seems to be unmoved by the criticism and maintained that Chief Ministers had to do business and there was no problem if it was legitimate. Things, however, have changed dramatically after the US indictment of Gautam Adani where he along with others have been accused of bribing state officials for buying solar power at inflated prices. While Revanth’s office says the CM himself decided to return the gift, other sources say that the order came from Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s office.

One thing is sure, both the CMs will now deeply mull before doing any business with Adani.

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This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity. Read about our partnership here and become a TNM subscriber here .

Powertrip: Adani jitters for state governments

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