Modi Helping Adani Duck SEC Summons; Lack of Nehruvian Indian Leader is Global Tragedy; India Fast-Tracks Spy Satellite Network After Border Blind Spots, but ISRO Failures Raise Alarms
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January 22, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister who has banned Indian Railways employees from wearing bandhgala jackets on the (spurious) grounds of it being colonial attire, has been spotted wearing a very Western suit and tie. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis can also be seen sporting the same colonial raiment.
Speaking of Davos, Gita Gopinath spoiled the celebratory hype about vikas somewhat by speaking of India’s pollution as an obstacle to not just the ‘ease of doing business’ in the country but as a major cause of morbidity too.
With its attempts to serve notice to Gautam and Sagar Adani through the Hague Service Convention thwarted by the Modi government, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has now petitioned a federal court to allow it to do so via the duo’s US-based lawyers or their email IDs, Devirupa Mitra reports. The SEC’s attempts arise from its civil case against the Adanis accusing them of orchestrating a bribery scheme in India and defrauding US investors who spent $175 million on a bond offering by their firm Adani Green. They deny the allegations.
While the Indian law ministry had last February forwarded the SEC’s service requests to an Ahmedabad court, in April it abruptly returned them on the ostensible grounds that they did not bear a seal and signature – the regulator said in court this had not been an issue before. Later last year the ministry claimed that the SEC’s own rules do not cover its summonses to the Adanis, an objection the commission deemed baseless. The Adanis must formally be served notice in the matter in order for the litigation to proceed, with or without their participation. The fact that the Modi government is doing its best to make sure that doesn’t happen is not really surprising.
