Bhubaneswar: A day after indictment of Gautam Adani in the US in a fraud scheme, the BJD on Friday rebuffed allegation that officials of the then Naveen Patnaik-led government in Odisha took bribes from the Adani Group for supply of renewable energy to the state from the central pool.
The US prosecutors alleged that the Adani Group paid USD 265 million in bribes to government officials of Odisha and four other states to secure contracts with state electricity distribution companies between 2021 and 2023. It pertains to a contract secured by Adani Green Energy and another renewable-energy company, Azure Power, to provide 12 gigawatts of solar power to the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a central PSU. Later to save the deal, Adani allegedly decided to bribe local officials to persuade them to buy expensive solar power, potentially earning more than $2 billion in profit over 20 years.
“These allegations against Odisha are baseless and not based on facts. The state has nothing to do with the agreement. Whatever agreement was done that remained confined among Gridco, the distribution company and the SECI, a central PSU. The state government has no role in all these matters though the administration was informed regarding the PSA”, former Energy Minister and BJD MLA Pratab Keshari Deb told PTI.
He further stated that there is a difference between other states and Odisha, where power distribution has been privatised. “Other states are doing the job directly, but Tata Power takes care of the distribution part of the electricity supply here,” he said.
Deb said that the agreement may involve Adani, SECI, Gridco and the distribution company. “All the agreements on power get the approval of the OERC (Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission), an autonomous body. The Gridco is also semi-autonomous. Therefore, the state government has no direct role in the agreements. Neither the Energy minister nor the secretary are involved in all such agreements,” he asserted.
Gridco, however, is yet to respond to these allegations.
Deputy opposition leader and senior BJD leader Prasanna Acharya, however, called for a prompt and impartial investigation into the bribery allegations.
Former president of Odisha Congress Sarat Pattanayak supported party leader Rahul Gandhi’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the matter.
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