Mukesh Ambani on Government Relations

Critics and several journalists have accused Ambani of close ties with political leadership, particularly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with commentaries referencing allegations of cronyism and disproportionate benefits flowing to Reliance under successive governments. Ambani has consistently denied improper relationships, and no court has adjudicated the central allegations, but the perception has shaped coverage of the group's policy wins in telecom, retail and energy.

After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Reliance continued buying Russian crude even as Western buyers pulled back; by 2025 India was sourcing about 42% of its oil from Russia versus 3% in 2021, with Reliance the largest Indian importer. The stance reflected a commercial willingness to navigate around Western sanctions — and to keep Jamnagar running at high utilization.

Jio evaded the 90-day promotional ceiling set by regulators by rebranding the Welcome Offer as the 'Happy New Year Offer' in December 2016, extending cutthroat free pricing into 2017. Combined with the appearance of Prime Minister Modi's face in a Jio ad in major English dailies, the moves drew accusations that the company was using regulatory-elasticity and political proximity to accelerate toward monopoly.

Jio's marketing drew political heat when full-page advertisements featured Prime Minister Narendra Modi's photograph, prompting a rebuke from the consumer affairs ministry and a public apology from the company for what it called an inadvertent mistake. The incident fed an existing narrative about proximity between Reliance and the Modi government, and gave competitors ammunition on regulatory-equity grounds.

The Cellular Operators Association of India — representing Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and others — protested that Jio had offered full commercial services to customers during what was nominally a testing phase, allegations Jio denied. The interconnection disputes extended after launch, with Ambani publicly highlighting 50 million call failures in a single week to pressure incumbents on points of interconnect.

Ambani invoked his license-raj upbringing to argue that Indians had grown more competitive and innovative post-liberalization, and that the same logic should apply to interconnect rules: incumbent operators withholding points of interconnect were, in his framing, violating license obligations and would have to relent within weeks because law cannot be broken indefinitely. The framing cast Jio as the rule-of-law champion against entrenched incumbent power.

Asked about competing with Sunil Mittal of Bharti Airtel and Kumar Mangalam Birla of Idea Cellular, Ambani was conciliatory publicly: India was big enough for everyone, he said, and the opportunity was to deliver Prime Minister Modi's Digital India vision to 1.2 billion people. The corporate olive branch masked an unusually aggressive roll-out in which he challenged competitors on regulatory and pricing fronts simultaneously.