The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
The Supreme Court judgement in the Adani case, rejecting petitions for an impartial probe is disappointing and unfortunate on several grounds. A statutory body like the SEBI has not been fulfilling its mandate for expeditiously probing allegations against the Adani group. In 2014, the DRI had made a reference to SEBI on a direct charge against Adani. In 2021, Parliament had been informed that the SEBI had been probing allegations against Adani but in its affidavit to the Court, SEBI denied such a probe. It is surprising that the Court took such a denial at its face value without questioning why the SEBI has not acted on the complaints.
Secondly, the SEBI had changed its own rules making them more opaque, and to conceal who the ultimate beneficiary is. The Expert Committee set up by the Supreme Court had itself stated that “SEBI’s pursuit of investigations is based on the premise that it is pursuing the ‘spirit of the law’, which flies in the face of the prospective amendments with deferred effect that SEBI has made on the legislative side.” However the Supreme Court has given approval to these amendments which admittedly act as a wall to conceal identities of the links of foreign investors with the “ultimate beneficiary.”
Thirdly, It is most unfortunate that the judgement has given an open licence to the government to probe whether Hindenburg Research’s allegations “ignored Rules” and to take action accordingly, in other words to shoot the messenger, which would jeopardise all those media outlets which had published the Hindenburg report.
The Supreme Court has not enhanced its credibility with this judgement.