Sri Lanka Adani Row: Official Quits After Alleging Link To PM Modi

The government has not commented on the now-retracted allegation by the chief of Sri Lanka’s electricity authority.

In a huge controversy over an energy project in Sri Lanka awarded to industrialist Gautam Adani’s group, a Lankan official who had claimed that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa acted under pressure from Prime Minister Narendra Modi resigned today.

MMC Ferdinando, the chairman of Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), had yesterday retracted a claim that he was told by President Rajapaksa about PM Modi pressuring him to give the wind power project directly to the Adani Group. The official dropped the bombshell claim on Friday, at an open hearing of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), a parliamentary panel.

The allegations involve a 500-Megawatt renewable energy project in Sri Lanka’s Mannar district. A video of Mr Ferdinando’s comment at the parliamentary hearing has been widely circulated on Twitter.

“On November 24, the President summoned me after a meeting and said that India’s Prime Minister Modi is pressuring him to hand over the project to the Adani group. I said ‘this matter doesn’t concern me or the Ceylon electricity board and this consists of the board of investments’. He insisted that I look into it. I then sent a letter that the President has instructed me and that the Finance Secretary should do the needful. I pointed out that this is a government-to-government deal,” the official said in Sinhala in the video, addressing the panel.

Three days after those comments, Mr Ferdinando has quit.

On Sunday evening, following a strong denial by President Rajapaksa on Twitter, Mr Ferdinando had also withdrawn his comments, claiming he had been “overcome with emotion” while facing questions that suggested wrongdoing by him.

President Rajapaksa had tweeted: “Regarding a statement made by the #lka CEB Chairman at a COPE committee hearing regarding the award of a Wind Power Project in Mannar, I categorically deny authorization to award this project to any specific person or entity. I trust responsible communication in this regard will follow.”

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES