Chief Whip Nurul Islam Moni’s description of Bangladesh’s power purchase agreement with India’s Adani Power as a “grave offense” is severe, but the emerging evidence suggests that severity is justified. The agreement was not merely an expensive commercial miscalculation. It appears to represent a broader failure of sovereignty, accountability, and fiduciary responsibility under the former Awami League government.

Bangladesh’s electricity consumers have endured rising tariffs, taxes, subsidies, and inflation because sweetheart deals for politically connected friends were indemnified by national interest clauses and sovereign decision arguments. The Adani deal represents this paradigm like no other: a 25-year contract awarded without a competitive bidding process, reportedly at inflated prices above market value, with the risk burden left disproportionately on Bangladesh.

The people of Bangladesh shouldn’t allow yet another telecommunication giant, abetted by a lapdog prior administration and unbridled bureaucracy, to stick them with generations of overbilling. If corruption, cronyism, or willful financial exploitation is uncovered, renegotiation won’t cover the full scope of the crime. Bangladesh must demand contract termination and reparation

A Contract Designed Against Bangladesh

The Bangladesh Power Development Board signed the agreement with Adani Power in November 2017. Under it, electricity is supplied from Adani’s 1,600-megawatt coal-fired Godda plant in Jharkhand. The facility was constructed primarily, indeed, almost exclusively, to supply Bangladesh, yet the contractual structure reportedly shifted many commercial risks to the Bangladeshi purchaser.

That fact alone demands an explanation. When a private company constructs a power plant in another country to serve one principal customer, it should bear a meaningful proportion of the investment, fuel and operational risks. Bangladesh, however, appears to have been treated less like a sovereign commercial partner than a captive customer.

The government-appointed National Review Committee concluded that electricity from the Adani plant was priced nearly 40 percent above its nearest comparable competitor. Other assessments reported that Bangladesh paid roughly four to five US cents more per kilowatt-hour than reasonable benchmarks and substantially more than it paid to other Indian electricity suppliers. Reuters reported that in fiscal year 2023–24, the Adani tariff was Tk 14.87 per unit, compared with an average of Tk 9.57 for electricity from other Indian companies. 

Such a disparity cannot be dismissed as routine market fluctuation. It is a structural failure. According to the review committee, overpriced coal, questionable treatment of Indian corporate taxes and harmful contractual provisions contributed to making Adani’s electricity the most expensive among Bangladesh’s cross-border imports.

Adani Power rejects that portrayal.  The company says its power was competitively priced. And it rightly points out that it kept supplying Bangladesh even as unpaid bills mounted. That’s a valid point, but it doesn’t address why Bangladesh signed a contract that allegedly locked it into a tariff many times higher than comparable imports.

Supplying power under a signed commercial contract is not charity. Nor can overdue bills be offset by concerns that the original invoices may have been computed under a manipulated, inflated, or unfairly negotiated metric.

No Tender, No Transparency, No Public Consent

The contract’s origins make the pricing concerns even more disturbing. The agreement was reportedly concluded without a competitive international tender. Competition is not a bureaucratic ornament. It is the most basic mechanism through which a government discovers market prices, compares technologies, distributes risk, and protects taxpayers.

Without competition, political cronyism can replace commercial logic. Prices can be obscured, liabilities hidden, and sweetheart terms offered with no external point of comparison. Citizens are then told the deal was too complex, too confidential, or too sensitive to foreign relations to challenge.

Bangladesh has experienced exactly this dynamic throughout its power sector. The previous government awarded projects based on extraordinary legal immunity clauses and indemnity provisions to expedite projects while shielding decisions from normal oversight. Guaranteed capacity payments were given to power producers even if they produced no power. Plants were given go-aheads regardless of actual demand, fuel supply, or transmission infrastructure. Private revenue was guaranteed while the public socialized the costs.

BPDB’s total loss for FY 20-24 was estimated to be around $4.13 billion. To be clear, that number shouldn’t be pinned on Adani alone; it highlights the catastrophic state of a power sector built on costlier contracts, fuel subsidies, foreign exchange risk, fuel prices, and poor forecasting. The Adani deal should be reviewed in the context of this broader structure of politically enabled liability.

The result was a system in which companies could secure their returns regardless of whether Bangladesh received affordable electricity, while the state absorbed the consequences through subsidies, borrowing, and higher consumer tariffs.

That is not energy planning. It is the privatization of profit and the nationalization of loss.

The Political Responsibility Cannot Be Evaded

The Adani deal was signed during Sheikh Hasina’s premiership at a time when her government’s relationship with New Delhi was presented as exceptionally close. Cooperation with India is both necessary and desirable, but friendship between states cannot mean one's financial submission to the other.

A sovereign government’s first obligation is to its own citizens. It must determine whether an agreement is affordable, transparent, and strategically justified, not whether it pleases a neighboring government or a politically connected corporation.

Who drafted the pricing formula that became the killer provision? Who approved the coal formula?  Who reviewed the tax treatment?  Which officials signed off on the fact that this deal was value for money? Why was there no competitive bidding process?  Were any dissenting technical views overridden?  Did any politically exposed persons, intermediaries, or government officials gain financially, directly or indirectly?

Reports say the panel has shared information on some individuals and suspicious transactions with the Anti-Corruption Commission. These are allegations that need to be investigated and proven. Media outrage should not lead to convictions.  But calls for due process shouldn’t shield them from accountability.

Too many commissions in Bangladesh have been launched amid fanfare, only to be shelved after the spotlight moved on. Let’s hope this one names the officials, advisers, negotiators, and winners ultimately responsible for the agreement. Bank transfers, offshore accounts, tax records, emails, and beneficial ownership should all be reviewed with foreign help if needed.

If crimes occurred, accountability must extend beyond junior bureaucrats. Political authority and commercial influence must not confer immunity.

Renegotiation or Arbitration?

Power Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood has said that the government is considering renegotiation or international arbitration. Both options are legitimate, but Bangladesh should not enter negotiations out of fear.

Adani has already pursued international arbitration over payment disputes. Bangladesh must therefore assemble a first-rate legal, financial and engineering team capable of examining every provision of the agreement. The country cannot afford politically appointed counsel, ceremonial committees or inexperienced negotiators confronting one of India’s most powerful corporate groups.

Renegotiation should include asking for significant tariff reductions, transparency in coal-price benchmarking, application of all available tax benefits, removal of any unjustified charges, equitable sharing of currency risk, and binding guarantees against force majeure renegotiations.

If Adani is not willing to budge on substantive issues, Bangladesh must be ready to call its bluff and move to arbitration and, if legally tenable, termination. Corruption discovered during negotiations could affect the agreement's enforceability. However, Bangladesh should scrap the contract based on facts, contractual stipulations, and legal opinions, not populist statements. An emotional decision to abandon the contract could leave Bangladesh vulnerable to billions of dollars in damages claims and further damage investors’ confidence.

Rolling thunder is needed, not sky shouting. 

Bangladesh should separate clean bills from contested ones. Bangladesh should not withhold payment for electricity received under agreed-upon terms. It should, however, dispute the amount tied to contested calculations. Retaining every penny would portray Bangladesh as unreasonable. Paying every demand would make Bangladesh a pushover.

This Is Not an Anti-India Question

Attempts will inevitably be made to portray scrutiny of the Adani agreement as hostility toward India. That argument must be rejected.

Bangladesh has every right to purchase electricity from India, Nepal, Bhutan, or any other commercially viable source. Regional electricity trade can improve energy security and help balance seasonal demand. But cooperation must be built on reciprocity and fair pricing—not political patronage.

Criticism of one Indian corporation is not criticism of India. Indeed, a transparent resolution would benefit relations between the two countries. No durable friendship can be built upon the belief that one side exploited a period of political dependence to secure a commercially lopsided agreement.

New Delhi should see this as a humiliation when corporate interests and geopolitical power are linked. If India seeks to be seen as Bangladesh’s stable partner, it should advocate transparency and renegotiation on fair terms, not weaponize a controversial private deal as a matter of political allegiance.

Bangladesh must diversify as well.  Relying on one company, one fuel, one country or one transmission pathway for electricity imports is a strategic liability. Where possible, the government should invest in domestic generation, bolster grid efficiency, increase renewable capacity, unlock competitively priced regional imports and work with Nepal and Bhutan to build connectivity via equitable transit agreements.

Energy security is not about swapping one dependence for another.

Parliament Must Open the Files

Moni has called for political differences to be settled within parliament. The Adani issue is the first real opportunity to demonstrate that commitment. Parliament should insist on publishing the contract, attachments, amendments, financial models, and negotiation notes, except to the minimum extent necessary to protect truly sensitive commercial data.

A parliamentary select committee should call to account former ministers, BPDB officials, advisers and negotiators. Its proceedings should be open to the public wherever possible. The report of the ‘National Review Committee’ should be made public with enough granularity to allow independent analysis of its process and findings.

Citizens should be told not merely that the price was “abnormally high,” but how it was calculated, who approved it, and how much Bangladesh may lose over the contract’s remaining life.

The government has been in office for only six months, and Moni is correct that entrenched energy problems cannot be corrected overnight. A new power plant cannot be built by political declaration. But transparency does not require two years. Publishing records, commencing prosecutions where evidence permits, and appointing competent arbitration counsel can begin immediately.

Patience may be necessary for infrastructure. It is not an excuse for postponing accountability.

Bangladesh Must Draw a Line

Let the Adani scandal be the moment Bangladesh turned its back on a culture of secret sovereign guarantees. Future governments should not be allowed to make deals which saddle their successors with liabilities hidden from competitive pressures, Parliamentary scrutiny and judicial review.

All significant power purchase agreements signed during the indemnity period should be subjected to independent review. Officials should be required to declare their interests. Competitive bidding should be the norm from here on, except in genuine emergencies and even then subject to retrospective Parliamentary ratification. Capacity payments, fuel pass-through formulas, tax breaks and foreign-exchange exposures should all be disclosed upfront and approved as public business.

The Adani deal therefore represents far more than simply a deal with Adani. It is a test of whether Bangladesh has moved beyond the days when political deals could be cashed in by friends of the regime with impunity.

If it was simply incompetently negotiated, then those responsible should be named and shamed, and systems put in place to ensure it does not happen again. If it was corruptly awarded, then Bangladesh should hold everyone involved to account and pursue every civil and criminal remedy available. And if Adani entered into provisions that cannot survive public scrutiny, then it too must agree to renegotiate, or face litigation with everything Bangladesh can muster behind it.

Bangladesh cannot recover every taka already lost. But it can refuse to finance another two decades of contractual subordination.

The country does not need revenge, diplomatic hysteria or anti-Indian grandstanding. It needs something far more threatening to entrenched interests: published evidence, professional litigation, enforceable accountability, and a government willing to say that Bangladesh is not for sale.