Who is Rameshwar Prasad Gupta, the SECI Chairman fired by govt before his term end?
The notification, issued by the Department of Personnel and Training, stated: 'The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved termination of services of Shri Rameshwar Prasad Gupta, IAS, as chairman & managing director, Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd., Ministry of New & Renewable Energy with immediate effect.'
Amid this sudden departure, we take a look at who is RP Gupta, his tenure and big decisions at SECI, and some of the controversies he fielded during his term with the state-run clean energy agency.
RP Gupta is an Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer of the 1987 batch from the Gujarat Cadre. He joined SECI as CMD in June 2023, after retiring as Secretary at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 2021.
He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) with a degree in aerospace engineering, and has previously also worked with the Ministry of Coal and the NITI Aayog.
Besides this, he has experience in statistics planning, programme management, economics and corporate management.
Gupta's removal is significant, and comes while SECI is targetting tendering 20 GW of renewable energy projects a year for the next few years. The company also has plans to set up 10 GW of solar capacity of its own and go public by FY27.
Further, Gupta had in 2024 shared plans for the SECI going public, but no details were revealed. Speaking at the 11th foundation day of SECI in 2022, he also said that the clean energy agency was yet to take a final call on the size of the initial public offering (IPO).
Among the controversies that RP Gupta-led SECI had to field include entanglement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) indictment of Adani Group for alleged bribery of about $250 million to secure power purchase agreements for solar energy projects in Andhra Pradesh, and the submission of fake bid documents by Reliance Power to SECI for a renewable energy tender.
When US prosecutors indicted Gautam Adani and other executives for alleged bribery in November 2024, Gupta told Mint that the SECI would not review the order or initiate a probe as there was no basis for it. He also denied any wrongdoing.
Then on November 6, SECI barred Reliance Power and its subsidiary Reliance NU BESS from participating in its tenders for three years, for allegedly submitting fake documents. This was withdrawn following a Delhi High Court's order. In May, other Reliance subsidiary Reliance NU Suntech Private signed a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with SECI.
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