United Democratic Front (UDF) legislators disrupted the proceedings of the Assembly during question hour on Tuesday raising corruption allegations in the Kolathunad lines package of the Transgrid project being executed through the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB).
The Opposition alleged that the project was awarded to Sterlite Power Transmission Limited in violation of a 2017 February order by the then Additional Chief Secretary (Finance) K.M.Abraham which stipulated that a project has to be retendered if the tender excess is above 10% of the initial estimate. Congress lawmaker T.N.Prathapan said the project cost increased by 54% from the initial estimate of ₹180 crore to ₹372 crore.
However, Power Minister M.M. Mani said the order was applicable to government departments only and not to the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB). He said the project was awarded to Sterlite because it quoted the lowest amount.
"The final estimate was prepared by top officials of the KSEB after thorough studies and based on the recommendations of a central Navaratna company. The Minister or the Chief Minister did not have any role in this," Mr.Mani said.
Speaker’s intervention
When Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala maintained that the Minister was misleading the house, Speaker P.Sreeramakrishnan intervened, asking him to raise his question rather than use the question hour to level allegations. The Opposition MLAs trooped into the well of the House against this intervention.
Later, Finance Minister T.M.Thomas Isaac's statement on the importance of the transgrid project defused the situation.
"When we are bringing power from outside, we need 400 kV lines to distribute it across the State. However, this work had remained stalled because of the enormous amount of land acquisition needed for the purpose. As part of the transgrid project, we are installing the 400 kV lines parallelly over the existing 220 kV lines, due to which we are saving as much as ₹5,000 crore in land acquisition cost. The Central government has given us a grant of ₹400 crore seeing the novelty of this project," he said
