Bhubaneswar: Alleging widespread corruption in handing over operations of four power DISCOMs to TATA Power, senior Congress leader Pradeep Majhi on Wednesday demanded Odisha government to cancel the contract within 30 days and threatened to move to the court if the government fails to do so.
Addressing a presser in Bhubaneswar, Majhi took the ruling BJD into task and drew comparison with the erstwhile Congress government. "Earlier, majority of the households in Odisha did not have electricity connections. But when the UPA government came into force, all the villages were supplied with electricity under Rajiv Gandhi Electrification Scheme and 97% of the households were electrified," Majhi said.
He said the then Congress government had constituted Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) in 1995 under electricity supply reforms, and four distribution companies, CESCO, WESCO, NESCO and SOUTHCO were formed, which were later privatised in 1999 for efficiency.
"But for some reason unknown to us, the AES & Reliance Infra who were running those four distribution companies for 15 years left Odisha in 2014, after which the state government took over and ran them under GRIDCO," Majhi said.
He further said, "The fact that has been baffling us is that the four distribution companies whose annual turnover was approximately Rs 11,000 crore and whose cumulative assets are counted to be Rs 15,000 crores, have been sold to a private company (TATA Power) for only Rs 1,000 crore.
Moreover, the bid after which the contract was awarded to TATA was done physically without any other participants, when all the bids across the country were being done electronically keeping COVID guidelines in mind,"
Though a bit late in demanding transparency in a deal that has already been actuated months ago, the Congress party warned the government to come clean on this and cancel the existing contract with TATA Power, failing which they will hit the streets to protest and even move to court if needed.
(Edited By Ramakanta Biswas)