Day after Rahul's speech, tax raids on Adani Wilmar in Himachal Pradesh

A day after former Congress president Rahul Gandhi targeted the Modi government for its alleged ties with business tycoon Gautam Adani, the Himachal Pradesh excise and taxation department conducted raids on Adani Wilmar in Parwanoo town of Solan district on Wednesday.

The raids were conducted in view of the allegations that the company has not paid GST for the last 5 years, according to media reports. The tax department has sought information about the company’s input tax credit claims concerning state operations. GST officials reportedly reached the location and checked all the relevant documents. They will prepare a report following which the next course of action will be decided.

According to excise and taxation department officials the company’s business stood at ₹135 crore last year. However, the entire GST input was adjusted through tax credit but no payment was made in cash. “We found many discrepancies while scrutinising the records. The raids are still continuing,” said a senior official of excise and taxation department.

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Adani Group has in total of seven functioning companies in Himachal Pradesh ranging from cold stores for fruits to grocery items supply. Adani Wilmar, which sells its cooking oils and other food products under the Fortune brand, is a 50:50 joint venture between business conglomerate Adani Group and Singapore-based Wilmar. Adani Wilmar has a warehouse of grocery items at Parwanoo that supplies grocery goods to the civil supplies department and the police department in Himachal Pradesh.

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Though the department termed it a routine exercise, the raid on a subsidiary of the beleaguered Adani Group comes at a time when the Congress-ruled state government is mediating talks to end a two-month-long deadlock between the company that shut its two cement plants after a dispute over freight rates with truck unions.

The Adani Group shut down its two cement plants on December 14, alleging that high freight rates had made the business unviable. It wanted the truck unions to slash the rates to ₹6.5 per km per tonne. The truck operators have now threatened a stir if the company fails to agree to their demand. They have called a Mahapanchayat on February 24 to chalk out their strategy against the closure of the cement plants.