Every time a highway, an airport or a spectrum licence changes hands in India, the same accusation resurfaces: that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is really being run for the benefit of two men — Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani. Opposition leaders repeat it at nearly every election rally. Both business houses call it a smear. So we went through the electoral bond database, the Comptroller and Auditor General's reports, Supreme Court orders and the US Department of Justice's own case files to see what is actually documented — and what is simply assumed.
Short answer: Both the Adani Group and Reliance (Ambani) have benefited from government decisions and have funnelled money to the BJP through linked companies — that part is on the public record. But no Indian court, and as of 2026 no regulator anywhere, has found proof of an actual quid-pro-quo between either group and the Modi government. The US bribery case against Gautam Adani, filed in 2024, was dismissed in August 2026. India's market regulator SEBI cleared Adani of the Hindenburg allegations in September 2025. The evidence supports "close, mutually convenient ties" far more strongly than it supports "control."
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Who Actually Donated What: The Electoral Bonds Data
India's electoral bond scheme let companies donate to political parties anonymously between 2018 and February 2024, when the Supreme Court struck it down and ordered the data made public. Once the numbers came out, journalists were able to match unique bond serial numbers to buyers and recipients. Here is what that data shows for the two groups.
Reliance-linked donations
No entity called "Reliance Industries" appears on the donor list. But Qwik Supply Chain, a little-known logistics firm registered at Reliance's own Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City campus and sharing directors with several Reliance group companies, bought roughly ₹410 crore in bonds and handed close to ₹375–395 crore of it to the BJP, with smaller sums going to the Shiv Sena and NCP. Reliance's response to reporters was narrowly worded: Qwik Supply "is not a subsidiary of any Reliance entity" — which sidesteps, rather than denies, the documented director and address overlaps.
Adani-linked donations
Adani Group companies themselves bought zero electoral bonds. Four firms with indirect Adani links — three subsidiaries of the Welspun Group (a joint-venture partner in Adani Welspun Exploration) and one logistics firm, ABC India — together purchased about ₹55.4 crore in bonds, of which the BJP encashed roughly ₹42.4 crore. Adani's spokesperson has flatly denied any involvement: "The Adani Group has never purchased electoral bonds, directly or indirectly."
| Metric | Reliance-linked (Qwik Supply Chain) | Adani-linked (Welspun units + ABC India) |
|---|---|---|
| Total bonds purchased | ~₹410 crore | ~₹55.4 crore |
| Amount that went to BJP | ~₹375–395 crore | ~₹42.4 crore |
| Directly owned by the group? | No — linked via shared directors/address | No — linked via joint-venture stake |
| Group's official position | "Not a subsidiary of any Reliance entity" | "Never purchased electoral bonds" |
For scale: the single biggest BJP donor via bonds was Hyderabad's Megha Engineering, at roughly ₹970 crore-plus. The BJP collected over ₹6,000 crore in bonds overall between 2019 and 2024 — nearly half of all money raised through the scheme by every party combined.
Regulatory Decisions: Jio's Spectrum Deal and Adani's Airports
Reliance Jio's telecom licence — a UPA-era decision, not a Modi-era one
This is the single most misquoted fact in the whole debate, so it's worth getting the timeline right. In 2010, a little-known company called Infotel Broadband — later taken over and renamed Reliance Jio — won a nationwide internet-only spectrum licence. In 2013, the Department of Telecommunications allowed it to upgrade that licence to a full voice/mobile licence for a migration fee of ₹1,658 crore, priced using a 2001 benchmark. The CAG later flagged this as an "undue advantage" worth about ₹3,367 crore to the company; some preliminary CAG queries floated even higher unconfirmed figures.
Here's the part that gets dropped from most retellings: this entire decision — the 2010 auction, the 2013 licence migration, and Jio's actual commercial launch in September 2016 — happened either entirely under the Congress-led UPA government (2010–2013) or in Jio's first two years of operation, which straddled the change of government. The CAG's criticism was of the UPA-era Department of Telecommunications, not a decision Modi's administration made. What the Modi government did preside over was Jio's subsequent explosive growth — helped by near-zero launch pricing, sweeping "Digital India" reforms, and a 2019 corporate tax cut that benefited large firms broadly, not Reliance specifically.
Adani's six airports (2018–2019)
In 2018–19, the Airports Authority of India privatised six airports — Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram — through a bidding process, and Adani Group won all six. Opposition leaders call this a self-awarded aviation "monopoly"; Adani says it won on the merits of its bids, and points out it later also lost or exited some airport-adjacent bids to rivals. Passengers and state governments have separately complained about steep post-privatisation fee hikes at Adani-run airports, a dispute that continues before India's airport tariff regulator, AERA.
On the energy side, a leaked 2017 state audit in Jharkhand alleged an Adani power plant was allowed to charge above-market tariffs; Adani has rejected the characterisation. No Indian court has ruled on the underlying allegation.
The Revolving Door: Ex-Officials on Both Boards
Critics of both groups point to a pattern of former government officials moving into corporate roles shortly after leaving office — a common feature of Indian (and global) corporate governance, but one that fuels "insider access" suspicions when it involves politically sensitive sectors.
- Adani: Aman Kumar Singh, a former Indian Revenue Service officer who served as principal secretary to Chhattisgarh's BJP chief minister, resigned from government service and joined Adani Group in November 2022 as its corporate brand custodian and head of corporate affairs — a role he held for about 31 months before stepping down. He briefly also sat on the board of NDTV after Adani acquired the broadcaster.
- Reliance: K.V. Chowdary, a former chairman of India's Central Board of Direct Taxes and India's Central Vigilance Commissioner (the country's top anti-corruption watchdog) from 2015 to 2019, joined the board of Reliance Industries and Reliance Jio as an independent director in October 2019, months after his government term ended.
Neither appointment has been found to be illegal — India's "cooling-off" rules for retired bureaucrats are narrower than in many countries — but both are cited repeatedly by opposition MPs and investigative outlets as evidence of a tightening corporate-bureaucratic network.
Hindenburg, SEBI, and the US Bribery Case — Where Things Stand in 2026
This is the part of the story that has moved the most since it first made headlines, so an up-to-date timeline matters more than opinion here.
- January 2023 — US short-seller Hindenburg Research accuses the Adani Group of stock manipulation and improper use of offshore shell entities. Adani shares lose tens of billions of dollars in market value within days.
- January 2024 — India's Supreme Court declines to hand the investigation to the CBI or a special investigation team, says third-party reports like Hindenburg's "cannot be regarded as conclusive proof," and directs market regulator SEBI to finish its own probe. A later review petition against this order is also dismissed.
- November 2024 — US federal prosecutors in Brooklyn indict Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and several executives, alleging a scheme to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian officials to win solar energy contracts. The SEC files a parallel civil case. Adani Group calls the charges "baseless."
- September 2025 — SEBI issues its final orders on the Hindenburg-linked transactions and finds no violations by Adani Group entities, closing the matter without penalties.
- 2026 — Under a changed US administration, the Department of Justice moves to drop the criminal case, the SEC settles its civil action, and on August 10, 2026, a US federal judge dismisses the indictment against Adani, his nephew and a company director "with prejudice" — meaning it cannot be reopened on the same allegations.
On the Ambani side, no comparable criminal or securities case has been filed by any regulator in India or abroad. The one publicly reported legal matter involving a Reliance-linked executive is a modest 2023 case involving an alleged ₹1.6 lakh (about $16,000) payment to a civil aviation official over drone-import approvals for a Jio unit — several orders of magnitude smaller than the Adani case, and Reliance has said it did not authorise it.
So Who's Really "In Control"?
Strip away the rhetoric and the honest answer is unsatisfying for anyone hoping for a clean villain: the documented record shows correlation, not capture.
Both conglomerates have grown enormously since 2014. Both have donated, directly or through linked entities, overwhelmingly to the ruling party. Both have picked up former government officials. Both have benefited from decisions — telecom reform for Reliance, infrastructure privatisation for Adani — that a reasonable critic could call favourable and a reasonable defender could call ordinary industrial policy that happened to suit India's largest companies. Neither group has been found guilty of bribing an Indian official by any Indian court, and the one foreign case that alleged exactly that has now been dismissed rather than proven.
What can be said with confidence: India's political financing system, especially the now-defunct electoral bonds scheme, gave large donors outsized, anonymous influence over the party in power — a structural problem that predates and outlasts any single company. Whether that amounts to Adani or Ambani "controlling" Modi's government, or simply two firms playing India's existing rules better than their competitors, is ultimately a judgment call the data alone can't settle.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Adani or Reliance directly donate to the BJP?
Not directly, by their own account. In both cases, the documented donations came from companies linked to the groups through shared directors, addresses, or joint-venture stakes — Qwik Supply Chain for Reliance, and Welspun subsidiaries plus ABC India for Adani — rather than from Reliance Industries or Adani Enterprises themselves. Both groups deny any direct or indirect role in electoral bond purchases attributed to their linked firms.
Was Gautam Adani convicted of bribery in the US?
No. He was indicted by US federal prosecutors in November 2024 on bribery and securities fraud charges, but he was never convicted. The Department of Justice moved to drop the criminal case in 2026, the SEC settled its parallel civil case, and a US judge dismissed the indictment "with prejudice" in August 2026, closing the matter permanently on those specific allegations.
Did the Modi government give Reliance Jio a special telecom deal?
The specific licence-migration decision that critics cite — allowing Jio's predecessor to convert its internet-only spectrum to a full mobile licence at a 2001-era fee — was made under the previous Congress-led UPA government between 2010 and 2013, before Modi took office in May 2014. The Modi government's role was mainly in the broader "Digital India" and tax-reform environment that Jio's launch and growth benefited from after 2016.
What did SEBI find in the Adani-Hindenburg case?
In final orders issued in September 2025, India's securities regulator SEBI closed its investigation into the transactions flagged by Hindenburg Research and found no violations by Adani Group entities. India's Supreme Court had earlier declined to transfer the probe to the CBI or a special investigation team.
Has any Indian court or regulator found proof of "crony capitalism" involving Adani or Ambani?
As of 2026, no. Indian courts and regulators have examined specific allegations — stock transactions, electoral bond purchases, tariff disputes — and in the cases that have concluded, have not established illegal favouritism by government officials. Opposition politicians and investigative journalists continue to argue that the pattern of donations, contracts and personnel overlaps points to undue influence, even without a single court finding to that effect.
A note on sourcing: This article draws on India's Election Commission electoral bond disclosures, CAG audit reports, Supreme Court and SEBI orders, and US Department of Justice/SEC filings, cross-checked against reporting from Reuters, Business Standard, Scroll, Newslaundry, The Wire and other outlets. Both the Adani Group and Reliance Industries have publicly denied wrongdoing in every matter described above. This piece reports on public allegations, official findings and their current legal status; it does not itself accuse any individual or company of a crime.