Odisha govt owes Rs 3,256 cr to Reliance Infrastructure

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has outstanding dues of Rs 3,256 crore on Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. This was informed by the State’s Energy Minister Pranab Prakash Das to the Assembly on Tuesday.

In a written reply, Das said the outstanding amount included Rs 1,300 cr on WESCO, Rs 1110 crore on NESCO and Rs 846 crore on SOUTHCO.

Notably, WESCO, NESCO and SOTHCO discoms are owned by Reliance Infrastructure.

The minister added in his reply that a case has been registered at the State electricity regulatory tribunal against Reliance Infrastructure for violation of several norms.

Though Odisha has so far invested Rs 180 crore in the three discoms, the three companies failed to arrange counterpart funding from their own source or through borrowing due to their negative net-worth in the balance sheet.

An allegation of wilful default of escrow arrangements with GRIDCO by not collecting revenue from large chunk of consumers and depositing the same in the escrow account is also levelled against R-Infra.