New Delhi: With political parties using him as punching bag in the highly charged election campaign, Adani Group head Gautam Adani today said he got no special favours from Narendra Modi and his group has since 1993 acquired only barren waste land for infrastructure projects.
The USD 8.7 billion ports-to-energy Adani Group began acquiring land near the coastal town of Mundra in Gujarat way back in 1993 and only one-third of a total landbank of 15,946 acres was acquired when Modi was Chief Minister, he said.
“Not a single acre has been taken from any farmer... We went to Kutch when no one looked there and acquired only barren and dessert-like land that was not suitable for agriculture,” Adani told PTI in an interview here.
Adani used the land to build India's biggest port, which loaded and unloaded a record 100 million tons of cargo in the year that ended on March 31, and the nation's biggest coal power station in the private sector, he said, adding that his group did not buy land at cheap rates to sell it to make profits.
“When we began acquiring land at Mundra in 1993, (Chief Minister) Chimanbhai Patel charged us 10 paisa per square meter.
