Hyderabad: After a Twitter war on insurance schemes between the BJP and TRS, a war of words broke out between the BJP and power utilities head on power purchase agreements (PPA) entered into by the government on Friday.
Levelling allegations against the power utilities, state BJP president K Laxman described the PPAs as a big scam and demanded an inquiry by a sitting judge.
Reacting to Laxman’s allegations on PPAs, Telangana Genco and Transco chairman and managing director D Prabhakar Rao said he was ready to face any inquiry, including a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at a press conference on Friday. He said that only one PPA was made with a private company after 2014 for procuring 570 MW, which was done through tenders and added that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was entered into with the Chhattisgarh government to procure 1,000 MW of power.
“We strongly feel that the BJP leader was misled by some people and was provided false information about power utilities,” Prabhakar Rao said.
He clarified that there was no pressure from the state government and the power utilities have been functioning independently.
Dismissing the allegations that solar power bids were finalised at a higher rate of Rs 5.50 per unit when the NTPC came forward to provide solar power at Rs 4.30 per unit, he said that the NTPC never offered to provide solar power at that rate. “Two years ago, NTPC and the power utilities entered into agreement for bundled solar power at the rate of Rs 4.66 and Rs 5.19 per unit. All the agreements on solar power were made in a transparent manner. It is not correct to say that the agreements were made overnight,” Rao said.
On Laxman’s claim that not a single MW of power generation was added after the formation of the state, he said that when the state was formed, solar power was just 71 MW, but has now risen to 3,600 MW and many power plants were added — at Bhoopalapally, Pulichintala, KTPS-Palvancha and Singareni at Jaipur. The installed capacity of power has also increased from 7,778 MW to 16,203 MW now, he explained.
Prabhakar Rao added that the state government had released Rs 22,000 crore for strengthening the power network.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes
