Hyderabad: Graft in power purchase Agreements, Thermal Projects

Hyderabad : Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy announced in the Assembly on Thursday that his government would order a judicial inquiry into power purchase agreements with Chhattisgarh as well as the alleged largescale corruption that had taken place in the construction of Bhadradri and Yadadri Thermal Power Plants using outdated subcritical technology. He said this was in violation of Centre’s directive to use supercritical technology in the grounding of power plants.

Intervening during a short discussion on the power sector in the Assembly, the Chief Minister said there has been undue delay in the construction of these two projects. They should have been completed in two years but even after seven years they were still not ready. On the other hand, the KTPS power project which had used supercritical technology had become operational in the shortest possible time.

Revanth Reddy said his government would set up an all-party fact-finding committee to investigate the 24-hour free power supply initiative of the BRS regime. He further said that negligence and corruption by the previous government in the power purchase agreement of 1000 MW from Chhattisgarh will be probed. He said the previous government had gone ahead with the agreements despite objections raised by the officials.

Not just that, he said, when they as Opposition members challenged government’s decision marshals were called and they were thrown out of the House. When the officer who was part of the Telangana movement raised objections, he was demoted and transferred to a remote location.

BRS legislator Jagadish Reddy, who initiated the discussion, tried to brush aside the allegations by stating that the previous government had increased the installed capacity of the power and created a lot of assets. Citing the white paper, he said the BRS government provided free power to farmers on an average of over 19 hours a day as against Congress party's allegations of eight to 10 hours and challenged the government to order a probe. Revanth accepted the challenge and announced that the probe would be ordered.

Siddipet, Gajwel and Hyderabad (South) were in top three positions with regards to transmission loss of power and there are a lot of dues from those areas. At this stage, AIMIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi spoke in favour of the previous BRS regime. The CM sought to know why he was so eager to support his “spoiled friend”. "Pay Rs 10 to keep a good friend and give Rs 10 to a bad friend and get rid of him,” Revanth Reddy added.