Why is a Reliance bigwig clarifying rumours on Adani ‘takeover’ of Gujarat Samachar?

On Thursday, Twitter was abuzz with speculation on Gujarat Samachar being “taken over” by the Adani Group.

For context, Gujarat Samachar is a leading daily in the state, and also one of its oldest. During the second wave of the pandemic, it had consistently questioned the government’s official statistics on deaths. The timing of the rumours is also interesting, since Gujarat’s assembly election is scheduled to take place later this year.

The clarification on the rumours, however, came from an unusual source – Parimal Nathwani, a Rajya Sabha member and also director of corporate affairs at Reliance Industries Limited.

Nathwani said he knows the newspaper management “well” and “they have no plans to sell newspaper to any corporate group, be it Adani or Reliance”.

Sadly for Nathwani, his “clarification” raised more questions than answers.