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Amid a buzz about the stake sale of the beleaguered coal-based power plants of private power producers, including Tata Power and Adani Power in Gujarat, the chairperson of the largest public sector lender, State Bank of India (SBI) met the Gujarat Chief Minister and other top Energy Department officials in Gandhinagar on Monday.
Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairperson, SBI, met Chief Minister Vijay Rupani amid the distress offer by the power producers to offload 51 per cent stake of their power plants for a token ₹1 to the state utility, Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd (GUVNL).
While sources at the chief ministers' office confirmed the SBI chief's visit, they termed the visit ‘courtesy visit' and remained tight-lipped about the topic of discussion.
On the other hand, Bhattacharya is also learnt to have met top officials in the Energy Department headed by Additional Chief Secretary, Sujit Gulati.
While Gulati could not be reached despite repeated attempts, officials from the Energy Department chose not to divulge any detail about the meeting.
Interestingly, the discussions took place in the absence of the top officials from the private power producers, while senior officials from GUVNL expressed ignorance about such a meeting in Gandhinagar.
SBI, which is the top lender among the consortium of the banks, may have a tough time recovering money from the troubled power plants. The combined outstanding of the power plants exceeds ₹40,000 crore.
Last month, Adani and Tata Power had written to the Gujarat government requesting GUVNL to consider various options to address the non-viability of thermal power projects, which are primarily dependent on the imported coal.
These imported coal-based thermal plants, having combined generation capacity of over 8,000 MW became non-viable after changes in the regulations at the source country - Indonesia.
The Supreme Court in April denied compensatory tariff to these companies, thereby, denying earlier reliefs granted by the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL).
Since then, efforts are being made to avoid these assets from turning into non-performing ones.
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