Reacting to the bribery charges against former chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy for the first time, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said that Jagan has “damaged the brand image” of the state.
Addressing the Assembly on Friday, November 22, CM Naidu said that the government will take further action after gathering information on the alleged corruption in the solar energy deal between the previous YSRCP government and Gautam Adani. Naidu did not, however, take Jagan’s name.
“Any government should be accountable to the people. The repetition of such crimes can be prevented only by bringing to justice those who committed them. The [US indictment] charge-sheet is with the [Andhra Pradesh] government, and details are being verified. Necessary action will be taken, and the same will be communicated to the House in due course,” CM Naidu said.
The US Attorney’s office has indicted Jagan and Gautam Adani for being involved in bribery. The charges state that Gautam Adani personally met with Jagan and offered Rs 1,750 crore in exchange for getting the state’s electricity distribution companies to agree to purchase seven gigawatts of power from Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI), a public sector undertaking.
Read: Gautam Adani met YS Jagan in 2021, promised bribe of $200 million, says SEC
SECI had awarded tenders to the Adani Group and Azure Power in 2019 and 2020, to supply 12 gigawatts of solar-generated electricity at a specified price. The SECI, in turn, needed to find state power companies that would be willing to buy the electricity at that price. According to US investigators, after SECI was unable to find buyers for the power because of high prices, Adani and Azure had conspired to offer bribes to state officials.
In August 2021, Gautam Adani allegedly met personally with the then chief minister Jagan about the fact that Andhra Pradesh had not entered into a Power Supply Agreement (PSA) with SECI and promised the “incentives” needed to cause Andhra Pradesh to do so, according to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
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