A day after Gandhi claimed in the Lok Sabha that “the Government of India gave Adani the Mumbai airport utilising agencies like as the CBI and the ED,” the firm made its statement.
Hyderabad: Business giant GVK Group on Wednesday firmly denied Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s claim that it had been under “extraneous pressure” to sell its interest in Mumbai airport.
A day after Gandhi claimed in the Lok Sabha that “the Government of India gave Adani the Mumbai airport utilising agencies like as the CBI and the ED,” the firm made its statement.
A GVK Group spokeswoman told PTI, “GVK reiterates that the decision to sell its shares in Mumbai Airport to Adani was decided by the management and there was absolutely no issue of any unauthorised pressure being applied to us.”
The operation of the Mumbai airport was transferred to Adani Group in July 2021 from GVK Group, which is presently in the centre of a controversy after a recent study by short-seller Hindenburg Research about the company’s business practises.
Sanjay Reddy, vice chairman of the GVK Group, stated to a TV channel that the company was attempting to obtain money for the airport business while outlining the reasons that resulted in the sale of the airport.
Reddy claimed that at the time, Gautam Adani, the founder and chairman of the Adani Group, approached him and inquired as to whether the GVK Group would be open to engaging in business with him. Adani expressed great interest in the airport.
It was crucial for us that he (Adani) guarantee that we will complete the full deal in one month. Therefore, from that vantage point, everything we did was in the best interests of the business and the lenders we had to pay back. As a result, we had to finalise the deal with Adani since we had no further communication with the other investors, Reddy added.
Gandhi claimed that the government changed the rules in favour of Adani and claimed that the provision stating that no one without any prior experience would be involved in the development of airports was removed while leading the Opposition’s attack on the Adani-Hindenburg issue in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
“The government altered this restriction, giving Adani access to six airports. After that, the government of India allegedly used organisations like the CBI and ED to take the most important and lucrative airport in the country, Mumbai Airport, away from GVK and gave it to Adani.
Adani Airport Holdings Ltd. (AAHL), the main holding company of the Adani Group’s airport sector, would control roughly 98 percent of the shares of GVK Airport Developers Ltd. (GVKADL) as of July 2021, according to Adani Enterprises Limited, which also served as the firm’s lender.
The management of Mumbai International Airport Ltd. was taken over by AAHL (MIAL).
GVK Airport Holdings Ltd. (GVKAHL), which has a 50% ownership position in MIAL, is the parent company of GVKADL. These two together own 74% of Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd.
