A Supreme Court lawyer on Wednesday filed a writ petition with the High Court seeking its directive for the government to review or terminate its power purchase agreement with India鈥檚 Adani Group.
M Abdul Qaiyum, who submitted the petition as a public interest litigation, challenged the legality of Bangladesh鈥檚 agreement with Adani Power (Jharkhand) Limited in 2017, raising concerns over unfavourable terms.
Qaiyum announced that the petition is scheduled for a hearing next week before the High Court bench of Justice Farah Mahbub and Justice Debasish Roy Chowdhury.
Earlier, on November 6, Qaiyum issued a legal notice to the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) chairman and the Ministry of Energy, demanding that they review or cancel the deal within three days.
The petition contended that the agreement locks Bangladesh into paying significantly higher rates for lower-quality coal from an Adani-owned mine in Australia, shipped through an Adani-controlled port in India to the Godda power plant, located in an Indian coal-mining state.
Under these terms, Bangladesh would bear the full cost of this transportation arrangement, despite the availability of closer coal sources.
Citing an investigative report by Al Jazeera, the petition states that BPDB 鈥榠s locked into a power purchase agreement that allows Adani to import coal from Australia to an Indian coal-mining state and pass the full cost onto Bangladesh,鈥� further asserting that this arrangement is economically burdensome and one-sided.
鈥業t is inconceivable how such an imbalanced deal could be executed by BPDB without undue influence from Adani,鈥� Qaiyum added in his petition, suggesting that the agreement requires immediate scrutiny to protect national interests.