Tamil Nadu government rejects opposition charge on Adani deal

CHENNAI: After a series of allegations being hurled by the Opposition parties on Tamil Nadu government's solar deal with the Adani group, the state electricity minister on Tuesday broke his silence terming them as "fraud allegations".
Speaking exclusively to ET, power minister Natham R Viswanathan said the allegations were being leveled by opponents who had their eyes on the 2016 state elections.

"They are trying to find a scam equal to the proportions of the 2G scam. And just because they are not able to find one against this government, they are trying to make a scam out of the power issue when there is none,'' he said.

The DMK, the Congress and the PMK have been questioning the government's rationale. The state struck a 25-year deal with the group earlier this month to purchase power at Rs 7.01 per unit from the company's proposed 648MW solar plan to come up in Ramanathapuram district. But opposition parties wondered how the group was offering power at Rs 6.04 per unit to Madhya Pradesh.

DMK treasurer M K Stalin had demanded a white paper on all the solar power purchase deals signed by the government including the Adani deal. State officials say Madhya Pradesh has taken the bidding route while Tamil Nadu has taken the power purchase agreement route based on a pre-decided price per unit and that there is no comparison between the two. But more questions arise by the day.

While the PMK has questioned why Tamil Nadu had given up the bidding route, Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president EVKS Elangovan wanted to know why the state was in a hurry to clinch solar deals at higher costs while wind and thermal power were available at lower price.

Meanwhile, state BJP president Tamilisai Soudararajan asked MDMK's Vaiko and EVKS Elangovan to stop associating the Adani group with the BJP ."Adani is not a part of BJP,'' she retorted while joining hands with other opposition parties demanding to know why the state government had signed a deal with Adani at a higher price.

Retired IAS officer and former Chairman of Haryana Electricity Board M G Devasahayam says technically the state government was right in saying that it is only following the orders of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission, but the more important thing is that the TNERC has lost its relevance.

"Competitive bidding to purchase power is the best way and power purchase agreements need to be done away with. PPA is now a discredited system. But the TANGEDCO and TNERC seem to be hand in glove on this issue as they have done away with the competitive bidding system (in purchasing solar power). The main idea to notify the 2003 Electricty Act was to protect the consumers' interest and not the interest of power producers," Devasahayam added.