Within a month of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) tabling the coal block allocation report in Parliament in August last year, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a First Information Report (FIR) against Hyderabad-based Navabharat Power Private Ltd for the coal block allotted to it in Odisha in January 2008.
Essar Power, which had recently bid for setting up a coal-fired power plant in Indonesia, said on Tuesday it is eyeing more coal and gas-based plants in the south east Asian country.
Adani Power on Wednesday said that it has got National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approval to acquire Essar Power's 1,200 MW thermal power project in Mahan, Madhya Pradesh. NCLT, Principal Bench at New Delhi, in its order dated November 01, 2021, approved the resolution plan submitted by Adani Power Ltd for acquisition of EPMPL (Essar Power M P Ltd), a company undergoing insolvency resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, Adani Power stated in a BSE filing. EPMPL owns a 1,200 MW thermal power plant in Singrauli District, Madhya Pradesh.
Adani Power, part of the Adani group, plans to add close to 6 gigawatts (Gw) of new power assets in the next five years, according to an investor presentation by the company. That is clearly meant to ride on India's burgeoning power demand. But there is another side to it: All of this new capacity is expected to be thermal power, or power produced from coal.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday said Pradhanmantri Suryodaya Yojana will enable one crore families to get up to 300 units of free electricity monthly and help them save up to Rs 18,000 annually. "There is provision of Rs 10,000 crore for rooftop solar (scheme) in the Budget," said finance secretary T V Somanathan in press conference on Budget later in the day. Earlier in the day Sitharaman in her interim Budget speech said through rooftop solarisation, one crore households will be enabled to obtain up to 300 units of free electricity each month.
Four companies, including India's largest private sector electricity generator Tata Power and infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro Ltd, chose not to bid for the Rs 16,000-crore ultra mega power project (UMPP) in Tilaiya in Jharkhand even as Reliance Power, Lanco Infratech and NTPC Ltd, the country's largest power producer, submitted their technical bids.
To invest Rs 5,000 crore in the projects, to be completed in four years.
The exposure, which is for the period ended September 2019, is across various platforms such as life funds, pension funds, and unit-linked funds.
The earlier resolution allowing these developers to charge higher power tariffs, now stands cancelled.
Mahan Coal claims it is being targeted at the behest of 'foreign masters' of the Western world.
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RPG Industries, Hindalco, SAIL, Jindal Steel, Monnet Ispat, GVK Power and Jaiprakash Associates among companies summoned for review.
Meeting in the midst of a raging controversy, an inter-ministerial group on coal blocks on Monday skirted a decision on cancelling allotments of 58 mines, but firmed up the guidelines for forfeiting of bank guarantees for failure to develop them.
Rapping the government for its failure to timely implement the competitive bidding mechanism for allocation of coal blocks, CAG on Friday said part of the Rs 1.86 lakh crore loss could have been partially tapped had the procedure been put in place earlier.
Essar Power and GMR are among the global bidders for a 450-Mw dual fuel power project planned by the Bangladesh government at Sirajgonj, about 140 km from Dhaka.
The circular says even a day's delay in servicing loans would be now taken as a 'default'. And once in default, for loans above Rs 2,000 crore, the banks will have to arrive at a resolution within 180 days, else lenders will have to file an application under the IBC within 15 days.
Reliance Industries has inked deals to supply gas from its eastern offshore KG-D6 fields to most power sector consumers, including Essar Power and an Anil Ambani Group firm.
State-run NTPC, Essar Power and Torrent are among the firms identified by the Union power ministry for buying natural gas from Reliance Industries' eastern offshore D6 block.
Power Finance Corporation, the nodal agency for ultra mega power projects, has extended the last date for accepting bids for Krishnapatnam project to October 24, sources said. Essar Power, Sterlite Industries, Larsen and Toubro, D S Construction, Japan's Sumitomo Corp and CLP-GMR combine are other companies believed to be in the qualified bidders list.
Power Grid Corp of India Ltd is set to form joint ventures with five more companies, including Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Essar, for setting up transmission lines in the country entailing a total investment of Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion).
Essar Power would invest Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion) for setting up a 1,000 MW coal-fired power plant in Chhattisgarh, a senior Essar group official said in Raipur on Tuesday.
The government will now auction 23 mines, instead of 24
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday filed its first charge-sheet in a Delhi court in the coal blocks allocation case against Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd for allegedly misrepresenting facts and making "fraudulent" claims to "embellish" its applications to get allotments between 2006 and 2009.
Almost all major metal and mining firms would be affected by the Supreme Court ruling canceling 214 coal blocks, but Naveen Jindal's JSPL and Aditya Birla Group's Hindalco would be among the worst hit, analysts said.
R-Power, Essar could be hit as state mulls benefit-sharing levy for ecology loss.
The government on Friday issued fresh show cause notices to prior allottees of coal blocks like JSPL, JSW and Tata Steel, asking reasons behind delays in mines development and warned of deduction in their bank guarantees if they failed to furnish replies.
The negotiations for a bail-out of the two plants could see continuity though a weakened BJP majority is a cause of concern among analysts, says Amritha Pillay.
Official is accused of taking a bribe of Rs 2 cr to issue order in an appeal favouring Balaji Trust
Dhirendra Mulkalwar, one of the protestors who raised a protest banner at Essar's Mumbai headquarters, on why he joined Greenpeace's Junglistan group that is working to save India's forests.
Govt to issue ownership rights of 15 coal mines on Mar 23.
The e-auction is seeing aggressive bidding.
The agreement came in after the Ruias agreed to clear most of the Rs 26,000-crore dues to the lenders on completion of the transaction.
The states will get over Rs l lakh crore.
In an urgent need for its image makeover, the scam-tainted coal sector will require mammoth efforts in 2015 from the government and the corporates too.
The government has a two-pronged strategy for e-auction of cancelled coal blocks.
Tata, Adani, Lanco to be hit as Indonesia may ban export of low-grade coal
Jaypee, Essar, GMR, GVK, Lanco, Abhijeet groups debt rise despite falling cash flow, says UBS
The Modi government's e-auction policy for coal, meant to shield the consumer against hike in electricity charges, has already led to serious allegations of cartelisation among the bidding corporates. Matters came to such a pass that the government at one point last week was considering inviting the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the matter, reports Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
With facts and figures, the CAG report has highlighted how Gujarat was far from a role model for states across India, and that the progress made in this province in western India in improving agriculture, education, healthcare and empowerment of women and children, was not exactly creditable, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
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