ADANI TAKES OVER RELIANCE ENERGY, NO CLARITY ON WHO WILL PAY PENDING TAXES

Reliance Infrastructure on Thursday signed an agreement to sell its Mumbai power business to Adani Transmission for a total consideration of Rs 18,800 crore. The deal value is said to be vallued at Rs 13,251 crore. This comprises business valued at Rs 12,101 crore and regulatory assets approved so far of Rs 1,150 crore.

It had been ealier reported in Free Press Journal that Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Energy had collected Rs 1452 crore from its customers on account of electricity surcharge and electricity sales tax, but hadn’t paid the same to the govt. Now, the question that seems to be on everyone’s mind after Gautam Adani’s takeover of Reliance Energy is who will pay the tax dues to the govt.

Now that the company has been purchased by Adani there is no clarity on who has to pay the govt it’s dues.

In a shocking revelation through his RTI query, activist Anil Galgali has come to know that Reliance Energy has not paid electricity duty and other taxes amounting to Rs 1,452 crore to the government of Maharashtra which it recovered from the customers. “The electric distribution arm of Anil Ambani recovered this amount of Rs 14,51,69,15,200 from its customers during the month of October 2016 to October 2017 and didn’t transfer this money in government’s exchequer,” RTI had unearthed.

RTI activist Galgali had sought to know the status of electricity duty and electricity tax paid to the state government by Reliance Energy after it recovered the smae from the customers. The reply furnished by the Electricity Inspector of Santacruz division, Minakshi Wathore, stated that ever since June 2017 electricity tax branch was opened, Reliance have recovered Rs 591,50,53,500 in last five months from June 2017 to October 2017 in the different heads of Electricity Duty, electricity Tax, Toss and Green Cess as per prescribed rate. But they failed to transfer it to the state government. While the Electricity Inspector at Mumbai Central division informed Galgali that from Oct 2016 to May 2017 in the different heads of Electricity Duty, electricity Tax, Toss and Green Cess, Reliance has recovered Rs 860,18,61,700 from the customers but yet the money was yet to be transferred to the government.

Commenting over the violation of not paying duty to the government on time, Galgali said that when he had filed the RTI query, the officials had issued notice to the company to pay the duty. According to Galgali, Wathore had issued instructions to the General Manager of Reliance to pay the duty on Novermber 3 and Mumbai Division had issued show cause notice to Reliance.

However, Galgali has written a letter to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and demanded stern action against not only the Reliance Energy, but also against the erring officials. In a letter, Galgali has demanded the government conduct an audit on Reliance Energy’s bank account and freeze the bank account to recover the dues and also not approve the sale of Reliance Energy till the taxes are paid.

“The govt should now seek clarity from Adani and Ambani on who will be paying the government dues,” demanded Galgali.