Out of power, KCR faces heat for power pact with Chhattisgarh

After a disastrous show in the Lok Sabha polls, BRS supremo K Chandrashekar Rao is facing the heat, with several investigations into several alleged irregularities during his tenure as the chief minister.

The Justice L Narasimha Reddy Commission, appointed by the Congress government to investigate possible corruption in the power sector during the BRS government between 2014 and 2023, is the latest to add to his woes.

The centre of the investigation is the Power Purchase Agreement signed by the previous BRS government with Chhattisgarh to procure 1000 MW of power. KCR, in response to the notices, wrote a 12-page letter to the Commission, suspecting its impartiality.

Official sources said certain decisions by the BRS government while signing the PPA had resulted in a loss of roughly Rs 6,000 crore to the state's exchequer. This included signing the PPA without inviting tenders.

The then-BRS government had signed an agreement to purchase electricity from Chattisgarh for Rs 3.90 per unit. However, additional costs like transmission line charges have led to an increase in the price up to Rs 5.64 per unit, resulting in an extra burden of Rs 3,110 crore.

Since the agreement was signed in late 2017, Telangana has purchased 17,996 million units (MU) of electricity from Chattisgarh. The total disbursements towards this purchase have amounted to Rs 7,719 crore, with dues to Chhattisgarh reaching Rs 1,081 crore.

It's not just that, Chhattisgarh said to have never supplied 1,000 MW from 2017-end, when the agreement came into effect. Due to the lower than contracted supply from Chhattisgarh, Telangana discoms had to buy power in the open market to meet the demand, which resulted in an additional burden of Rs 2,083 crore between 2017 and 2022, the year Chhattisgarh stopped power supply in April.

KCR's letter

KCR in a letter to the Commission two days ago said the government ordered a judicial probe with the malicious intent of undermining the popularity of the former BRS government, despite the latter's round-the-clock provision of power to all sectors in a state that was desperate for power.

He also said Telangana's installed capacity, which was 7,779 MW at the time of its creation, has now risen to 20,000 MW, while per capita power consumption, which was 1,196 units in 2014, has gone up to 2,349 units in 10 years.