Balkrishna, the co-founder and managing director of Patanjali Ayurved, was a shareholder in all three companies that bid to operate a tourism project in Uttarakhand, The Indian Express reported on Friday. One of the firms was awarded the tender.

The firm that won the contract denied allegations of wrongdoing, arguing that equating an investor’s “passive shareholding” with collusion was misleading.

In December 2022, the tourism board of the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttarakhand launched a tender process to develop adventure tourism in the George Everest Estate near Mussoorie.

The government agreed to provide to the successful bidder 142 acres of land, parking space, pathways, a helipad, a café, five wooden huts, an observatory and two museums for a rent of Rs 1 crore per year, newspaper reported. The facilities were to be developed by the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board.

The Indian Express reported that all three firms that bid for the contract had Balkrishna as their common shareholder, which violated the tender rules.

Balkrishna holds more than 99% of the shares in two of those companies: Prakriti Organics India Private Limited and Bharuwa Agri Science Private Limited, according to The Indian Express.

In the third company Rajas Aerosports and Adventures Private Limited, he had a 25.01% stake at the bidding stage. However, he secured a majority stake of 69.43% in the firm after it was awarded the tender, the newspaper reported.

Rajas Aerosports and Adventures was awarded the contract in July 2023.

The two companies that failed the tender process acquired a 17.43% stake in Rajas Aerosports and Adventures in October 2023, according to the newspaper.

Four other firms that are owned by Balkrishna also cumulatively acquired 33.25% in Rajas Aerosports and Adventures.

The contract granted to Rajas Aerosports and Adventures contradicts an undertaking signed by the bidders, which requires them to confirm that while preparing and submitting their bids, they had “not acted in concert or in collusion with any other bidder or other person/s and also not done any act, deed or thing which is or could be regarded as anti-competitive…” The Indian Express reported.

A spokesperson of Rajas Aerosports and Adventures told the newspaper that the company had raised funding from a “diverse set of investors over the years [but] all strategic, operational and management decisions of the company are solely taken by its founders and managing director”.

“It is factually incorrect and misleading to equate passive shareholding by an investor with collusion,” the spokesperson was quoted as saying. The spokesperson also said that Rajas Aerosports was never a subsidiary or affiliate of the conglomerate Patanjali.

Amit Lohani, the deputy director of the department's adventure tourism wing, told The Indian Express that the board had estimated that the annual rent was Rs 1 crore. This was in response to a query on whether price discovery could be fair if all three firms had a common shareholder.

“The tender was open, and anyone could participate,” he told the newspaper. “This is not an unusual matter that some have shareholding in other companies.”

Colonel Ashvini Pundir, who was the tourism development board's additional chief executive officer for adventure sports when the tender process was launched, told The Indian Express that “it is not collusion” because the companies are independent entities.

“We do not go for a witch hunt of companies and their backgrounds,” he was quoted as saying. “You just give the highest bidder the tender, and the bottom line is the company is valid and legal.”