JOIN USCongress serves breach of privilege notice to Meghalaya CM on NTPC issue
Opposition Congress legislator Zenith M Sangma on Friday served breach of privilege notice to Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma for allegedly misleading the House on power dues to NTPC.
He said the information provided by the chief minister on March 9 to the House while replying to a motion to discuss the failure of governance is in complete deviation from the actual content and intent of the 2007 power purchase agreement between NTPC and the state power board.
Conrad Sangma had told the House that NTPC is arm twisting the state government to pay Rs 11 crore per month without even drawing power from it and the state is likely to pay Rs 3325 crore to it for not drawing power from it in the next 25 years.
I am serving the notice to inform you that a motion of breach of privilege under rule 158 of the rules and procedure and conduct of business in the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly will be raised by me on Monday, the 15th of March 2021, Zenith M Sangma said.
He quoted a paragraph from the 2007 agreement which read, Notwithstanding the obligations of the MeSEB (Meghalaya State Electricity Board) to pay all the dues as per this agreement, in the event of default in opening of LC letter of credit) of adequate amount in favour of NTPC or payment of bills beyond a period of 60 days of billing, NTPC shall be entitled to regulate/divert the share of MeSEB to any other bulk power customer as per the provisions of generic procedure for regulation of power supply issued by the CERC or any competent authority
He said that the chief minister had "deliberately hid" the operational part of paras 2.2.4 and 12.0 of the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between NTPC and MeSEB, the operational part of the tripartite agreement signed on March 20, 2003 by the state government, the Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India.
The information in the mentioned paras governed the content and spirit of the PPA and by hiding the operational part of the Electricity Act 2003 the chief minister had misled the House, he said.
In 2007 the present Leader of Opposition Mukul M Sangma held charge of the power department and was a deputy chief minister in the Congress-led coalition government headed by D D Lapang.
Mukul Sangma had said on Thursday that Congress will table the motion against the chief minister for allegedly misleading the House on the power purchase agreement signed with NTPC in 2007. He had also regretted that the attempt to mislead and misinform the House had been made by none other than the leader of the House.