Nitin Sethi & Shreegireesh Jalihal
The Union government designed a solar power auction that discouraged competition and paved the way for Adani Group to secure contracts for assured purchase of its expensive power for thousands of crores of rupees over the next 25 years.
The extraordinary auction conditions and a series of exemptions brought in by the Union ministries of power, the renewable energy and its arm the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) in 2019 ensured that Adani Group was the dominant player in the competition with just two others in the ring--Azure Power India Limited and Navayuga Engineering Company Limited.
Even the sparse competition turned out to be embarrassingly empty as Navayuga Engineering bid the highest permitted tariff and lost. The exit came immediately after it signed a deal worth thousands of crore of rupees with Adani Group to sell its port in Andhra Pradesh, negotiations for which were going on while the two competed for the solar contract.
The other competitor, Azure Power, by now has become well known, with the US authorities accusing it of colluding with Adani Group to pay bribes of more than Rs 2,000 crore to state government officials to buy the expensive solar power that they sold to SECI, an intermediary that buys and sells power.
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