ADANI IN TRANSMISSION TANGLE

How one of India's mightiest industrialists has fallen in Mamata Banerjee's esteem!

- Romita Datta

Till the other day, the West Bengal chief minister was boasting about Gautam Adani's declared intent of investing Rs 10,000 crore in the state-a promise that had come at the Bengal Global Business Summit in April 2022. The impending development of the Rs 25,000-crore deep sea port at Tajpur by the Adani Group too was being touted as a milestone achievement of her government. But with the group caught in the furore over the Hindenburg report, Mamata has attacked him as an adaar byapari (ginger trader', or a small-time trader). The political storm around Adani has made the state government go quiet on its own deals with the billionaire. It now claims total ignorance about the purchase of land for a project by Adani Power in 2022 that has spawned unrest amongst villagers in Murshidabad district. The charges they level are serious enough and not the sort that Mamata, especially with her Singur agitation past, would ideally like to have haunting her: alleged forcible acquisition of land along with low compensation.

Adani Power Ltd, under a bilateral agreement signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2015 Dhaka visit, is setting up a 1,600 megawatt thermal power project at Godda in Jharkhand for supplying electricity to Bangladesh, in collaboration with the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB). High-voltage transmission lines from Godda have been drawn for the purpose, cutting through Bengal before entering Bogura and Rongpur in Bangladesh. The lines, supposed to transmit 400,000 volts of power, traverse 44 km in Bengal over six villages of Beniagram panchayat in Murshidabad's Farakka block, including over 1,000 bighas (330 acres) of fertile mango and litchi orchards.