Kickback in OPGC sell-off alleged

BHUBANESWAR, July 23: Senior Biju Janata Dal leader Bijayashree Routray today alleged a huge kickback of resource in the disinvestment of the profit-making Orissa Power Generation Corporation (OPGC) and demanded the immediate cancellation of the selling out of 49 per cent of the shares to AES Trans-power, a multinational company of the United States. Routray told newspersons here that the Orissa government, the AES company and the DSP Merril Lynch Company, a foreign consultancy firm, had entered into an “unholy nexus ” to sell the power plants of the OPGC at a much lower price.

He said the state government had decided to disinvest 49 per cent of the stakes of the OPGC which owned two units of 210 mw power plant each at the Ib valley. The AES Trans-power Company had been setting up two units of 210 MW each at the same place.

Routray said though the AES trans-power had offered the highest bid Rs 603 crore for a 49 per cent stake of the OPGC, considering the market value and the profit-making power units,the price quoted by the multinational was lesser than the offer of Rs 720 crore fixed by DSP Merrill Lynch.

The BJD MLA demanded that the government ask the highest bidder to offer the highest price commensurating with the prevailing price of other profit-making power units. He said while the face value of the Rs ten share for the two power companies – Bombay Suburban Electric Supply (BSES) and the Tata Power Supply had been Rs 161 and Rs 90 respectively, the OPGC shares had been fixed at only two and half times more than the face value as against eight to nine times more in other profit-making power units.