The Congress on Thursday (September 17, 2026) alleged that a thermal power project originally conceived for public sector undertakings was “diverted, redesigned and delivered on a platter” to businessman Gautam Adani by the Uttarakhand government, and said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will get a befitting answer for its creation of a monopoly in the upcoming Assembly elections.
Across BJP-ruled States in the country, an open loot of the people’s rights is under way to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s capitalist friend Adani. A fresh example of this has emerged in Uttarakhand. In his statement, Mr. This is a textbook case of a State government first killing its own public sector project and then rewriting every single rule of a competitive tender until it fits, almost to the exact megawatt, an Adani plant that already existed a thousand kilometres away in Chhattisgarh, Mr. Khera alleged. Khera asked.
Khera said, “PM Modi’s Modani model has now colonised the hill State of Uttarakhand, where a thermal power project originally conceived for State and Central public sector undertakings has been ruthlessly diverted, redesigned and allegedly delivered on a platter to his ‘Param Mitr’ Gautam Adani, at a staggering estimated cost of ₹1.6 lakh crore to the people of Uttarakhand over the next 25 years. In 2024, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami formally told the Union Coal and Mines Minister that Uttarakhand’s proposed thermal power plant would be built through a joint venture of UJVN Limited and THDC India Limited, not a private developer, and this was approved in principle by the Union Government in July 2024. “Why was the fixed-charge ceiling increased to 75% — is the BJP Government guaranteeing electricity to Uttarakhand or guaranteed income to Adani for 25 years? Why should the people of Uttarakhand pay nearly ₹1.6 lakh crore over 25 years for a project whose tender conditions were repeatedly changed to fit one corporate group?” he said.
Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said, “If Modani wants it, nothing is impossible! “To buy electricity for 25 years from Adani’s power plant in Chhattisgarh, the Uttarakhand BJP government scrapped the proposed joint public sector project of government enterprises UJVN and THDC and changed 84 out of 86 conditions in the new tender,” he alleged on X. Congress’ media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said PSU here stands for “Pushkar Selling Uttarakhand”. “Barely six months later, on 16 January 2025, the State government abruptly abandoned this public sector project, citing timeline concerns, even though the UJVN-THDC joint venture had been incorporated less than a year earlier and had published a roadmap to double Uttarakhand’s power capacity within eight years,” Mr. Khera said. “How many rules will the BJP government bend, how many public-sector projects will it kill, and how many public resources will it hand over before PM Modi admits that the “Modani model” is the real policy of his government,” Mr.
