Adani-Hindenburg row: Cong calls nationwide protest on August 22, will seek removal of SEBI chief

The Congress on Tuesday announced that it will hold a nationwide protest on August 22 outside Enforcement Directorate (ED) offices in states to press for removal of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) chief Madhabi Puri Buch over allegations against her by Hindenburg report.

The grand old party has also demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the allegations against the Adani group companies.

AICC General Secretary and MP, KC Venugopal said that during the agitation on August 22, the protesters will “gherao the Enforcement Directorate Office in each state capital.”

“Today, we convened a meeting of AICC General Secretaries, Incharges and PCC presidents under the leadership of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. We had a discussion about one of the biggest scams happening in the country right now- the Hindenburg revelations, the scam related to Adani and SEBI,” he said.

Alleging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s involvement in the ‘scam’, the Congress MP said, “We unanimously decided to have nationwide agitation on this issue demanding two things, one is a JPC inquiry on Adani mega scam in which the Prime Minister is fully involved and in which the financial market regulation has now been found to have been severely compromised…”

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge held a meeting with all general secretaries, state unit chiefs and AICC state in-charges in Delhi on Tuesday where they discussed the demands for a caste census, declaring Wayanad landslide a national disaster, and the natural calamities in Himachal Pradesh and northeastern states.

“Regarding the Bangladesh issue, a meeting was called by the Government of India to take all possible steps to ensure that targeted attacks on religious minorities and their places of worship are stopped and to ensure that they are enabled to live a life of security, dignity and harmony,” the AICC general secretary said.

Hindenburg Research on August 10 alleged that SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and her husband Dhaval Buch had stakes in obscure offshore funds used in the alleged Adani money siphoning scandal.

Buch and her husband have dismissed the charges as baseless and alleged that Hindenburg Research was attacking capital markets regulator SEBI’s credibility and attempting a character assassination of its chief instead of replying to a showcause notice served to it for “violations in India”.