A senior leader of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has alleged that the shutdown of Adani Power’s Godda unit in Jharkhand, which supplies electricity to Bangladesh, is linked to Prime Minister Tarique Rahman not attending the BRICS Summit in New Delhi last weekend.
The 800 MW Unit-2 went offline around Thursday midnight (September 10) after developing a boiler problem, officials said. Following this, Bangladesh faced a power crisis for nearly 84 hours. Reports said that nurses at a hospital were forced to use torches to treat patients in Barishal.
Adani Power’s 1,600 MW two units (2×800 MW) are located in Motia, Patwa in Godda district. According to the company, the Ultra-Supercritical Thermal Power Plant (USCTPP) is the first thermal power plant exporting its entire power supply to Bangladesh over a 130 km long, 400 kV cross-country double-circuit transmission line, connected exclusively and directly to the Bangladesh grid.
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“The unit was synchronised with Bangladesh’s national grid at around 12:04 pm today (September 13), allowing it to resume power supply,” Md Nahid Hasan, public relations officer of Power Grid Bangladesh, told The Daily Star newspaper.
BNP leader’s allegations
BRICS Summit was held in New Delhi on September 12 and 13, with top global leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and others attending. However, Bangladesh Prime Minister Rahman decided to skip the summit.
Reacting to Adani Power’s one of the two units being shut down in Jharkhand, BNP Acting Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi alleged that it was due to Rahman not attending the BRICS Summit. He claimed that Rahman was not invited by India as Bangladesh’s Prime Minister but in another role.
“Tarique Rahman is the prime minister of an independent and sovereign country. So, will you not invite him as prime minister? Will he sit on the sidelines? That cannot happen. He did not go. By not going, the prime minister of Bangladesh upheld the country’s dignity, independence and sovereignty,” Rizvi said, as per the newspaper report.
“He (Tarique) decided not to go, and the next day it was shut down. What was the reason behind that? Do you need to pass the bar exam to understand it? Do you need a PhD from a university? We understand what happened,” he added.
India said that Rahman was extended two invitations to attend the BRICS Summit. “We had invited the Prime Minister of Bangladesh for a bilateral visit. Subsequently, he was also invited to attend the BRICS Summit in his capacity as the Chair of BIMSTEC. Therefore, he had received two invitations – one for a bilateral visit and the other for participation in the BRICS Summit,” Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Tuesday (September 15).