New Delhi: Chairman of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) in Sri Lanka M.M.C. Ferdinando has resigned from his post.
The development came days after he told a parliamentary committee that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “pressured” Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to clear an Adani Group project in the island nation.
Ferdinando subsequently withdrew the statement and apologised after President Gotabaya himself “vehemently denied” it.
Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera said in a tweet on Monday afternoon, “I have accepted the letter of resignation tendered to me by the CEB Chairman Mr MMC Ferdinando. Vice-Chairman Nalinda Ilangakoon will take over as the New Chairman CEB.”
Ferdinando, during a hearing of the Committee On Public Enterprises (COPE) on Friday, said that President Rajapaksa had summoned him after a meeting in November last year and told him that the wind power project be awarded to the Adani Group of India’s billionaire Gautam Adani as Prime Minister Modi had urged him to do so.
However, President Rajapaksa on Saturday categorically denied Ferdinando’s statement before the parliamentary panel.
Rajapaksa tweeted: “I categorically deny authorisation to award this project to any specific person or entity”.
On Sunday, Ferdinando wrote to the COPE chair in Parliament Professor Charitha Herath that he was withdrawing his comment, saying it had been done under stress, and that he was not influenced by either President Rajapaksa or the Indian High Commission here to retract it.
There was no immediate reaction from the Indian government on the issue.
The 500 MW wind power plant by the Adani Group in Mannar caused a storm when the CEB engineers threatened to strike over the government’s amendment to the CEB Act of 1989.
The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya leader Sajith Premadasa has threatened to take Ferdinando to the parliamentary privileges committee for lying.