Land for PSPs in Andhra Pradesh: Probe sought into land allotments

Hyderabad: Successive governments in Andhra Pradesh, by YSRCP and now TDP-led NDA alliance, are facing criticism for allotting land sites for Pumped Storage Projects (PSPs) on a nomination basis rather than through competitive bidding. Some of the allotments were reportedly made in constitutionally-protected Scheduled Areas.

Former senior bureaucrat and Government of India Secretary EAS Sarma has raised serious concerns about the practice, noting that states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Assam appear to be following the guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Power, while Andhra Pradesh has consistently sidestepped the competitive bidding framework.

Instead, he said, both governments chose to award sites to favoured private promoters through a process that is neither transparent nor accountable, raising troubling questions of impropriety and breach of public trust. The previous YSRCP-led government allotted multiple sites across the state including in Scheduled Areas to the Adani Group and select other private parties. The current TDP-Jana Sena government has followed a similar path, awarding sites to the Navayuga Group and Chinta Green Group through the same nomination route, he said.

He demanded a probe into these land allotments.

What makes several of these allotments particularly contentious, according to him, is their location within Scheduled Areas, where the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act commonly known as PESA and the Forest Rights Act (FRA) apply. Both laws mandate prior consultation with local Adivasi Gram Sabhas before any land use decisions are made.

Sarma said that state authorities have blatantly bypassed these legal provisions, denying tribal communities their statutory right to be heard. The Union Ministry of Power introduced detailed guidelines in 2023 specifically to ensure that proposed pumped storage projects make optimal use of water and other natural resources while keeping storage costs to a minimum.

“Supreme Court, in the well-known Samata case, has ruled that lands and other resources in the Scheduled Areas should not be alienated in favour of non-tribals and private parties. The way the successive governments have indiscriminately allowed those private agencies to set up PSPs in the Scheduled Areas infringes the apex court's orders. Though many of those PSPs operate as stand-alone projects not necessarily connected to an existing reservoir, since they require one-time drawal of a large quantity of water and recurring replenishment for evaporation losses, they tend to drain away water from local streams on which the adjacent communities critically depend. An objective evaluation done under the aegis of the CWC will bring out this implication. In the ultimate analysis, most of these projects are cost-intensive, they heavily degrade forests and, in the Scheduled Areas, they are prima facie illegal,” Sarma said in a letter to Union cabinet secretary, TV Somanathan on Tuesday.

He added that in the 2-G Spectrum and Coalgate cases, the apex court held that those who are involved in irregularly alienating natural resources to private parties through non-transparent procedures should be deemed to be liable under the Prevention of Corruption Act and they should be proceeded against.

“In my view, alienating highly valuable natural resources to private parties through such non-transparent procedures creates space for acts of malfeasance, including money laundering and other economic offences. I therefore request you to get this thoroughly investigated, preferably by the Central investigating agencies, and those responsible proceeded against in order to safeguard the public interest,” he added.