No power for Commonwealth Games 2010- Shinde under scanner
Friday, 26 March 2010 z

Not a single megawatt from Damodar valley Corporation will come to Delhi for the Commonwealth Games
Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) is to provide additional power to Delhi during the the 2010 Commonwealth Games and will light up the Games Village. The Corporation has signed a contract to deliver 2,500 megawatts of power to the national capital. Glaring instances of political interference in the Union Power Ministry has been confirmed. Bureaucrats under scanner have been retained to head one of the country's leading power sector PSUs, the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC).They have been allegedly handpicked by Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.

The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has given a damning reports and finger's are being pointed at Shinde for his backing of corrupt DVC bosses.

But the big question is whether DVC can deliver with DVC's own engineers saying that they cannot fulfill the promise. DVC is reportedly not in a position to even deliver a single megawatt of power.

"Not a single megawatt from Damodar valley Corporation will come to Delhi for the Commonwealth Games. Five hundred megawatt units of Mejia Power House are scheduled to come up in May and August 2010. That was the only project which was on paper being shown before October 2010. All the other projects which were supposed to give those are being acknowledged as being commissioned after October 2010," claims All India Power Engineers' Federation Chairman Padamjit Singh.

A letter by the CVC to the Power Ministry clearly says that hardly any contract awarded by the DVC was free from corruption. According to CVC, 2,000 contracts have been awarded on a single-tender basis, and all government guidelines are being flouted on a daily basis.

Fingers are now being pointed right at the top and the Power Minister's backing of two tainted DVC chairmen is being questioned.

In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April 2009, Shinde asked for extension of Ashim Burman as DVC's chairman despite Burman being under the scanner of the Central Bureau of Investigation and the CVC.

When the Prime Minister's Office did not give the go ahead, the Power Ministry violated all rules to appoint another tainted man as the next chairman for a five-year term.

Subrata Biswas was appointed without the mandatory clearance from the CVC. Shinde has defended himself, saying he had no idea about the corruption cases.

"Clearance and all is not the job of a minister. It is the administrative lookout. If the ministers are going to look into all this then what will the administration do," says Shinde.

Biswas still remains chairman of DVC and his fate remains undecided in a file which is stuck in the Prime Minister's Office for many months now.

Clearly, one of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's favourite projects doesn't seem to have much of a future. Ironically, DVC is in a muck when the Congress is at the helm of affairs in New Delhi.