On 23rd December, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar showered praises on the business tycoon Gautam Adani for donating Rs 25 crore to set up a new technology centre in Baramati. Sharad Pawar and Deepak Chhabria of Finolex inaugurated the robotic lab in Baramati’s Vidya Pratishthan’s engineering department.
Following the inauguration, Pawar thanked Gautam Adani and Vijay Shirke of Shirke Constructions for donating the funds for the project. He said, “We are constructing India’s first centre of excellence on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for which there is a need of ₹25 crores. Fortunately, our two colleagues agreed to help after I urged them.”
He added, “I thank Vijay Shirke for his help. At the same time, Gautam Adani has sent a cheque of ₹25 crores to the institution to bring this project into reality. With the help of these two industrialists, we are building this project now. I must take Adani’s name and thank him for his contribution.”
NCP chief publically acknowledged Gautam Adani’s contribution to a project at Pawar family-owned Vidya Pratishtan just days after his ally Uddhav Thackeray called the Adani-firm-led Dharavi redevelopment project the “biggest scam in the world”. In a speech following a march on Adani’s office, Thackeray lashed out at the Eknath-Shinde-led Maharashtra government for giving the project to the Adani Group. He said, “The state has a programme of government at your doorsteps, but it is a case of government at Adani’s doorsteps.”
In a statement, Adani Group clarified that the Group won the Dharavi redevelopment project in a bidding process, and nothing was unlawful about it.