Industrialist Gautam Adani’s indictment in the US states that more than 85% of the alleged bribe — about Rs 1,750 crore out of Rs 2,029 crore — was given to a top-ranking official in Andhra Pradesh. However, the development has drawn muted responses from political parties in power in the state, particularly the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

“There is no discussion on the issue in the Assembly,” Minister Nara Lokesh Naidu told The Indian Express. “We heard about the US court case. We will look into it in a day or two,” said TDP national spokesperson K Pattabhi Ram.

Sources said there are three potential reasons for the TDP taking this approach.

One, the party wants to see how things play out in the coming days before – and if at all – it frames a response. Sources said that although the allegation is that bribes may have been paid by the Adani group during the period YSR Congress Party chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was the CM, to grab solar power contracts, the TDP is wary of wading into the muddle. “We have to weigh the pros and cons before taking any step. We are treading carefully,” said a TDP leader.

A minister The Indian Express spoke to detailed the second possible reason: “Naidu (Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu) is himself courting the group to seek investments. He recently met the managing director of Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd… AP needs solar power and is in no position to cancel the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) made with Adani Solar. When Jagan came to power in 2019, he cancelled several PPAs made by the TDP government, which caused a power crisis in the state. We don’t want such a situation.”

Thirdly, Naidu is averse to upsetting his renewed bonhomie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, sources said. Significantly, the TDP is in a bind because Deputy Chief Minister K Pawan Kalyan, the Jana Sena Party chief who is close to Modi and the BJP central leadership, was instrumental in convincing the BJP to join the TDP-JSP alliance, which resulted in a landslide win for the NDA in the state.

At the Centre, the TDP is a key ally of the NDA. TDP MP from Srikakulam K Ram Mohan Naidu is the Union Civil Aviation Minister while TDP MP from Guntur Dr Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani is the Union Minister of State for Rural Development and Communications.

A leader from Pawan Kalyan’s party said on the development, “We are only a regional party. We do not have a comment on this as of now.” YSRCP leaders did not respond to requests for a comment despite repeated attempts.

The Opposition parties in the state — the Congress, the CPI, and the CPI(M) — however took up the matter with gusto. CPI insiders said they had tried to “expose” the “same scam” for three years.

According to the indictment, “the defendant Gautam S Adani personally met with Foreign Official 1 in Andhra Pradesh to advance the execution of PSA between SECI and AP’s state electricity distribution companies, including on or about August 7, 2021, on or about September 12, 2021 and on or about November 20, 2021”. The “Foreign Official 1”, according to the indictment, “had served as a high-ranking government official of Andhra Pradesh from May 2019 to June 2024”.

The indictment further states that of the total bribe amount of Rs 2,029 crore, Rs 1,750 crore went to this “high-ranking government official”. The indictment read: “In furtherance of the bribery scheme, the co-conspirators, through Gautam S Adani, Sagar R Adani, Vneet S Jain and others had offered and promised to Indian government officials approximately 2,029 crore rupees in bribes in exchange for Indian government officials causing the state electricity distribution companies to execute PSAs under the Manufacturing Link Project, which would benefit the Indian Energy Company’s subsidiaries ad the US Issuer. Approximately 1,750 crore rupees of the corrupt payments was offered to Foreign Official 1 in exchange for Foreign Officer 1 causing AP’s state electricity distribution companies to agree to purchase seven gigawatts of solar power from SECI under the Manufacturing linked project.”

While the indictment has not named the “Foreign Official 1”, the CPI said that it had questioned Jagan Mohan Reddy’s government about the alleged “deal” with Adani. In September 2021, when it was widely reported in the Telugu press that Adani held a meeting with Reddy, the CPI called it a “secret meeting”.

“We knew it was a secret meeting because what transpired in the meeting was not made public. After this meeting, the AP government hurriedly allowed the Adani group to set up power plants in the state,” CPI state secretary K Ramakrishna told The Indian Express. The CPI at the time asked the government why it had favoured the “Adani group alone”, Ramakrishna added.

Now, Ramakrishna’s party has decided to revive the debate once again because of the TDP’s silence. “We think that the indictment has validated our stand of 2021. We want the Indian government, especially Prime Minister Modi, to respond to the questions posed by CPI,” said CPI general secretary D Raja. The state unit of the Left party has asked the state government to set up a judicial enquiry into the “electricity scam”.

The CPI(M) issued a statement demanding that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) book Adani on “corruption charges”. “Gautam Adani and his business empire have had the full protection of the Modi government … Prime Minister Modi himself had shielded Adani from any enquiry or prosecution on the charges emanating from the Hindenburg expose,” said the party, adding that a “full-fledged fledged investigation by an independent agency is required to unearth all other wrongdoings by the Adani group of companies”.