Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) chief MMC Ferdinando has resigned from his post today. He had alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had put pressure on Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to get India’s industrialist Gautam Adani a tender for a power project. Sri Lanka’s opposition parties created a ruckus after his statement. In the later period, suddenly there was talk of Ferdinando’s resignation. Sri Lanka’s Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekara said she had accepted the resignation. CEB vice-chairman Nalinda has been replaced in his place.
The Chief of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) in Sri Lanka told a parliamentary panel that Narendra Modi had pressured Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to award a 500 MW wind power project to Gautam Adani. Earlier he claimed that this was told to him by Rajapaksa. However, later issuing a statement, he has said that he had become emotional in the meeting, due to which he lied. He is taking back what he has said about Modi.
Ceylon Electricity Board chief MMC Ferdinando testified before a parliamentary panel that he was told by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa that PM Modi had pushed for a 500 MW wind energy project to the Adani Group. He appeared in Parliament on Friday in the hearing of the Public Enterprises Committee. There was a lot of uproar over his statement.
Sri Lanka’s President Rajapaksa said in a tweet earlier on Saturday that in response to the statement of the Chairman of the Ceylon Electricity Board in the hearing of the Parliamentary Committee regarding the award of a wind power project in Mannar. He is not in favor of giving this project to any specific person or organization. He is sure that responsible statement will be given in this matter. He later said that Sri Lanka was facing a power crisis. Therefore, the government had decided that power projects should be sanctioned at the earliest. But there is nothing wrong with anyone in this. The government is doing its work only under a transparent policy.
However, the other side of the coin is that Gautam Adani had recently bagged two big projects in Sri Lanka. This is his third project. This country is currently facing a big crisis. In such a situation, the opposition had alleged that the Rajapakse government was getting PM Modi’s friend to enter the wrong door from the backdoor. By the way, in times of crisis, the Modi government has provided assistance of $ 3 billion to Sri Lanka since January.