CHANDIGARH: The People's Commission on Public Sector and Public Services i(PCPS) has demanded an investigation into large-scale corporate corruption in the power sector.
PCPS in a press release has said that the US District Court’s recent indictment of several Indian companies, including Adani Green, and the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), raises disturbing concerns not only about large-scale corporate corruption but also about how fraudulent policies adopted by the Union Ministry of Power at the instance of favoured business conglomerates have defrauded electricity consumers across the country.
PCPS had repeatedly pointed out how the Ministry of Power irregularly invoked its authority under Section 11 of the Electricity Act of 2003 to impose an obligation on state power utilities to buy electricity from solar power plants to meet at least 10% of their total electricity requirement, irrespective of its unit cost and affordability. Similarly, the centre ordered the state power utilities to buy coal from overseas sources to cover the shortage.
Both those measures indirectly benefitted a few domestic private business groups known to be close to the ruling political executive at the cost of electricity consumers across the country. Such consumer-unfriendly measures adopted by the Ministry of Power during the last several years were at the instance of a few business conglomerates close to the executive..
The US court’s judgement, based on detailed investigations by US Security Exchange Commission and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, clearly points to how the Adani Group officials acting in tandem with a US company persuaded SECI and the state-owned power utilities in several states to sign one-sided Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) that would enable those private companies to earn billions of dollars of profits over the next several decades, entirely at the cost of the electricity consumers in India.
PCPS in the statement has demanded an independent judicial oversight, a comprehensive investigation of this be taken up by central agencies to gather further evidence from the FBI, factual evidence on the circumstances that led to the Union Ministry of Power adopting such misguided policies and issuing such illegal directives to States.
If the allegations emerging out of the indictment are found to be true, the concerned business conglomerates and their promoters will be blacklisted and prohibited from undertaking activities in the electricity sector of the country. PCPS demands that a comprehensive report on this be placed before the Parliament within six months.