The Congress party on Wednesday expressed concern about Adani Enterprises’ indirect acquisition of stake in news channel NDTV.
Without naming the Adani Group or the news channel, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that the development is a brazen move to control and stifle any semblance of independent media in the country.
“The news of a deeply over-leveraged company owned by the PM’s ‘khaas dost’ making a hostile takeover bid of a well-known TV news network is nothing but concentration of economic and political power,” Ramesh wrote in a tweet. “What’s mysterious is how a loan given by one of the ‘Humare Do’ is used as a weapon by the other member of the duo to trigger the hostile takeover of the television network.”
Read: How Adani acquired a firm controlled by an Ambani aide to launch a hostile take-over NDTV
In a regulatory filing on Tuesday evening, Adani Enterprises announced it will acquire 29.18% stake in news channel NDTV through its subsidiary company Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Limited, which it had bought on the same day.
In 2009, Vishvapradhan Commercial Private Limited had given a loan of Rs 403.85 crore to NDTV. According to the terms of the loan, the company held the right to exercise its warrants and convert the loan amount into equity shares – which it did after being brought by the Adani Group on Tuesday.
The Gautam Adani-led group of companies also said it will launch an open offer to acquire another 26% of the media house.
According to the rules of the Securities and Exchanges Board of India, an entity that acquires more than a 25% stake in a company gets the right to announce an open offer to the shareholders of the target company inviting them to sell their shares at a specific price.
NDTV said that the notice about the acquisition was served without “input from, conversation with, or consent” of the founders of the channel – Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy.
“As recently as yesterday, NDTV had informed the stock exchanges that there was no change in the shareholding of its founders,” the news channel said in a statement. “NDTV has never compromised on the heart of its operations – its journalism. We continue to proudly stand by that journalism.”
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the value of NDTV shares increased by 5% to hit their highest trading permissible limit for the day, PTI reported.
At 10 am, The stock was at its 52-week high of Rs 384.50 on the Bombay Stock Exchange and at Rs 388.20 on the National Stock Exchange.
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