Dikhyaa Mohanty 
The BJD denied on Friday that officials of the previous Naveen Patnaik-led administration in Odisha accepted payments from the Adani Group in exchange for the state’s supply of renewable energy from the central pool, a day after Gautam Adani was indicted in the US for a fraud scheme. The Adani Group allegedly paid USD 265 million in bribes to Odisha and four other state officials between 2021 and 2023 in order to get contracts with state energy distribution businesses, according to the US authorities. The Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a federal PSU, has contracted with Adani Green Energy and Azure electricity, another renewable energy business, to supply 12 gigawatts of solar electricity.
Adani allegedly chose to pay local authorities to convince them to purchase pricey solar electricity in order to save the agreement, perhaps making over $2 billion in profit over the course of 20 years. In Odisha, the BJD administration ruled from 2000 till June 2024.
“These allegations against Odisha are baseless and not based on facts. The state has nothing to do with the agreement. Whatever agreement was done that remained confined among Gridco, the distribution company and the SECI, a central PSU. The state government has no role in all these matters though the administration was informed regarding the PSA. Other states are doing the job directly, but Tata Power takes care of the distribution part of the electricity supply here. All the agreements on power get the approval of the OERC (Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission), an autonomous body. The Gridco is also semi-autonomous. Therefore, the state government has no direct role in the agreements. Neither the Energy minister nor the secretary are involved in all such agreements” former Energy Minister and BJD MLA Pratab Keshari Deb said.
Gridco, however, is yet to respond to these allegations. Deputy opposition leader and senior BJD leader Prasanna Acharya, however, called for a prompt and impartial investigation into the bribery allegations. Former president of Odisha Congress Sarat Pattanayak supported party leader Rahul Gandhi’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the matter.
On July 22, 2021, the SECI allegedly agreed to a 500 MW PAS with Odisha Discom in exchange for a bribe of “hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“According to Adani Green’s internal records, a payment equal to hundreds of thousands of dollars was paid or promised to government officials in the Indian state of Odisha to cause Odisha to enter into a Power Supply Agreement with SECI for the purchase of 500 MW of power. Consistent with Adani Green’s internal records, SECI announced its first Power Supply Agreement (PSA) related to the Manufacturing Linked Projects in July 2021, pursuant to which the Grid Corporation of Odisha (Gridco) agreed to buy 500 MW of power capacity from SECI” said the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) told US District Court, Eastern District of New York.
In its annual report for 2022–2023, the state PSU, which currently buys and sells power in bulk to the four distribution companies in Odisha, stated that in order to meet future Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO) targets, three Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs)/PSAs for 410 MW of solar capacity and two PSAs for 400 MW of wind capacity were signed with SECI. Furthermore, Gridco signed a second PSA for the acquisition of 600 MW of wind power from SECI on June 9, 2023.
