Inquiry sought into 'unnecessary' purchase of power by previous govts

Taxpayers’ money was ‘squandered’ while Escoms remained underutilised, Kumaraswamy alleges.

Cutting across party lines, members in the Legislative Assembly on Monday sought a House committee probe into purchases related to the Energy department in the last 15 years. This came after JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy alleged that the governments during this period had “squandered” taxpayers’ money. 

Leader of Opposition Jagadish Shettar, Congress member K R Ramesh Kumar and others endorsed Kumaraswamy’s demand that a House panel be set up to investigate the irregularities, if any, into the purchases. The JD(S) leader was taking part in the debate on grants under the Energy department. Energy Minister D K Shivakumar is likely to reply on Tuesday. 

Kumaraswamy claimed that reckless purchase of power during the erstwhile BJP government had pushed the power utilities to the brink of bankruptcy. As many as 35,426 million units of power was purchased for Rs 17,480 crore during 2008-13. The power purchased since 2004 should be investigated to ascertain the rationale behind the previous governments’ decisions, he demanded. 

In 2006-07, the then coalition government of the JD(S)-BJP purchased 40.5 mu of power for Rs 28 crore. In 2008-09, when the BJP government was in power, 4,181 mu of power was purchased from various sources for Rs 1,943 crore.

 Kumaraswamy said that the money spent on purchase of power shot up in the subsequent years, touching the peak in 2012-13 with Rs 4,839 crore, while power-generating units remained underutilised. During 2013-14, when the Congress came to power, Rs 3,191 crore was spent on power purchase, the JD(S) leader mentioned. 

All the five electricity supply companies now have an accumulated debt of Rs 11,000 crore. So much so that the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) was recently forced to take an overdraft of Rs 1,500 crore for its day-to-day expenditure. That’s why, the incumbent Congress government has not been able to provide supply regular power, Kumaraswamy charged. 

“Why was such a huge amount of taxpayers’ money spent to purchase power? Was it really necessary? Who were responsible for taking these decisions,” he demanded. Kumaraswamy, however, did not make direct allegation against any individual on the issue. Besides Kumar, another Congress member K Shivamurthy also demanded a probe. 

Shettar, however, disagreed with Kumaraswamy’s statement that there was nothing illegal about the decision to purchase power. The BJP leader, who once headed his party’s government, said that it had been forced to purchase power as the previous Union government did not co-operate. Karnataka was denied its full quota of power from the central grid and the coal supply was cut down. Besides, the demand for power had shot up because of severe drought during those years, he argued. 

Kumaraswamy alleged that transmission equipment worth Rs 4,000 crore, including transformers, were purchased during the BJP government under the Niranthara Jyoti scheme, which it failed to implement effectively. Similarly, in 1999, the then government spent Rs 600 crore on Rural Load Management System. But the system was hardly upgraded, he asserted. 

The JD(S) leader claimed that the previous NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee had barred private companies from implementing power-generating projects initiated by the then Karnataka government headed by Congress leader by S Bangarappa in the early 90s. 

Due to the negligence of the power sector over the years, he went on, Karnataka’s per capita power availability had remained just 873 units, against 2,004 units and 1,558 units of Goa and Gujarat respectively.