Bribery Charges Against Dabhol Baseless: Joshi
The division bench reserved its judgment in the case filed by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (Citu) against the Union of India and others, challenging the power purchase agreement of the renegotiated 2184 mw project.
The government gave a clean chit to DPC through an affidavit filed by Maharashtra chief minister Manohar Joshi in the Mumbai high court.
Justices B P Saraf and M S Rane had directed Joshi to file an affidavit outlining the circumstances that led to the scrapping and later the revival of the project, apart from an explanation on the civil application suit filed by the government against the Enron-led consortium.
Advocate-general C J Sawant read out Chief Minister's seven-page statement in the court. A passage on Page 5 of the statement read: The contentions raised in the suit were based on two aspects, namely, commercial aspect of the project dealt with exhaustively in the report of the cabinet sub-committee and reports about bribery, corruption and misrepresentation appearing in newspapers.
At this juncture, the judge intervened and wondered if the advocate general needed to add that these later turned out to be baseless. Sawant obliged. The addition (that the charges were baseless) to the statement was immediately placed on record by the court.
In a press statement, Sanjay Bhatnagar, vice president of Enron Development Corporation, said: While we are awaiting the judgment of the honourable court, we are happy that our name has been cleared. It has been categorically stated and recorded by the court that the allegations were without any basis.
The Chief Minister's statement otherwise inanely chronicled the Enron saga, as the Sena-BJP saw it: from the time when it gathered controversy after controversy, the alliance coming to power with the mandate to review the project, the project's scrapping and later the renegotiation for the benefit of the people of Maharashtra.
Regarding the government suit against the company, Joshi's affidavit said: It was filed as a strategy in our confrontation with DPC, aimed not only as counter to the arbitration proceedings but also as a bargaining counter for any (possible) renegotiation.