A ‘black paper’ issued by Congress party on Sunday accused Shivraj Singh Government of indulging in corruption in purchase of power worth Rs32,000 crore for a 24-hour power supply and surplus production in the State.
This is the second time the Congress took on the BJP on the issue after charge-sheeting the State Government of indulging in corruption to the tune of Rs1.46 lakh crore.
Releasing the black paper on power purchases, leader of Opposition in the State Assembly Ajay Singh said the State Government had purchased power worth nearly Rs12,000 crore in the past one decade without any tender. Union Minister Harish Rawat and other senior leaders of party were present.
The State Government shelled out Rs32,000 crore for purchasing power in the State past one decade and a major share from it went in corruption, said the black paper.
The 12-page black paper has detailed about the major power purchases made during the successive two tenures of the BJP. It has also disclosed the names of those companies including those black listed got bulk orders for power supplies without tender.
Citing the example of lanco Amarkantak Power Private limited, Singh said only after placing order it got a wind of its black listed status and immediately cleared its name from the negative list.
The party claimed the company, lanco Amarkantak Power, snapped its agreement with the Government and sell power in the open market yielding a profit which was ‘shared’ by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Minister for Energy Rajendra Shukla.
The agreement was to supply 300MW of power to Madhya Pradesh at the rate of Rs 2.25 per unit from September 2008. But on March 14, 2008 without citing any argument, lanco terminated the deal. Instead of selling power to Madhya Pradesh, between 2009 and April 2010, lanco sold the 300MW at increased rates in the open market at Rs629.60 crore while its total cost of production was Rs162.10 crore. The company made a profit of Rs467.50 crore.
It is one such example, he said, adding many other companies without even power production were placed order for power purchase.
According to him, the state government also promoted power purchase to eat up public money bringing down the production in its own plants on many pretext. The Congress leader also vowed to get it investigated in case the Congress was voted to power.
While taking a dig at Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s ambitious Atal Jyoti Abhiyan under which it claimed to have been supplying round the clock power through feeder separation, he said, “not even 10 hours power is supplied to villagers.”