Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday questioned why parts of his speech were scrubbed from parliament records as he doubled down on his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his links with billionaire Gautam Adani.
"Why were my words expunged?" he asked reporters as he headed into parliament during PM Modi's statement. On his way out, he said the Prime Minister had failed to answer the questions he raised on Tuesday.
"I asked him simple questions (about his relationship with Gautam Adani). He did not answer them... it reveals the truth. If they were not friends, he would have agreed to an inquiry. He said nothing about allegations of shell companies in the defence sector," he said.
"It's clear the Prime Minister is trying to protect him. It's a matter of national security and infrastructure. The Prime Minister should have said, 'We will get it checked''. But he didn't," Mr Gandhi added.
On Tuesday, the Congress leader had launched a scathing attack in parliament on PM Modi and Gautam Adani, whose companies are in the spotlight after US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research alleged stock manipulation and accounting fraud by the group.
The Congress leader, who recently completed a 3,500-km Bharat Jodo Yatra, accused PM Modi of helping Gautam Adani's business empire across sectors, prompting emphatic rebuttals from the ruling BJP, which called his allegations wild and reckless.
The Adani Group has called the Hindenburg report a "malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India's highest courts".
Opposition parties allege that the recent meltdown in Adani Group shares involves public money, as public sector companies Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and State Bank of India (SBI) have invested in them. The Adani group says it has complied with all laws and disclosure requirements.
(Disclaimer: New Delhi Television is a subsidiary of AMG Media Networks Limited, an Adani Group Company.)
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