Congress alleges irregularities in PPAs

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, MAY 13. The Congress has alleged irregularities and loose-ends in the Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), saying that consumers in the State have been taken for a ride. It has come out with facts and figures in support of its charge after a scrutiny of the documents by six of its MLAs.

The party said on Saturday that when the dozen projects in question went into generation, they would liquidate the AP Transco by charging exorbitant price per unit which it would not be able to pay.

Dr. M. V. Mysoora Reddy, CLP secretary, Mr. N. Kiran Kumar Reddy and Mr. N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, both MLAs, who were among the six legislators who examined the PPAs for six hours in the Energy Minister, Mr. K. Subbarayudu's Secretariat chamber yesterday, met the press here and alleged irregularities in the PPAs. They demanded documents relating to LoIs, bid, original costs and selection procedure for display apart from the revised PPA covering GVK Industries proposing to set up a 520-MW plant at Krishnapatnam, which was not made available. They wanted all the PPAs be put on the Internet so that technocrats and the concerned citizens would know what was happening in the State. They hoped the Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, would do that, as he spoke about transparency from roof-tops.

The MLAs said they were able to go through nine out of 12 PPAs of ``short-gestation'' plants within the limited time available. They found in all of them some columns indicating the names of co-partners left blank deliberately for being interpolated later with different names. The signatures of the APSEB Chairman and of representatives of developers were found in ``unclear initials'' and this only indicated sheer irresponsibility with which they handled the projects involving crores of public money, giving scope for suspicion. The nine PPAs related to Ispat Power Limited, BBI, Krishnapatnam, HNPC, Visakhapatnam, SEPS Oakwell Power Limited, NCC Power Corporation Limited, Snehalatha Power Limited, Kondapalli Power Corporation and BPL, Ramagundam.Coming to specific issues, Dr. Mysoora Reddy said the PPAs, which were uniform in pattern, provided for penalty payment by the developer, if the planned project was not commissioned as per schedule, at the rate of Rs. 50,000 per 100 MW per day for the first 180 days and Rs. 3.5 lakhs per day for 100 MW beyond this period. If dates had been honoured, Kondapalli, Gauthami, Ispat, NCC, Snehalatha and SEPS Oakwell would have gone on stream by now, some of them by the latter half of 1998 and the others by 1999. But the Government had not demanded any penalty from them. Except Kondapalli project, none of them achieved financial closure even after the supposed commissioning date.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Regional
Next     : Fire in factory, many trapped