Gujarat is India's renewable energy flagship. Its Chief Electrical Inspector for solar projects was issuing safety certificates at a rate that suggested he was rubber-stamping them from a moving vehicle — which, given what the ACB found at his homes, he could have afforded.
Ashwin B. Chaudhari, Gujarat's Chief Electrical Inspector at Udyog Bhavan in Gandhinagar, was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau on June 2 for issuing NOCs and safety certificates for solar energy projects without conducting mandatory site inspections. In the seven days before his arrest, he had approved more than 100 solar project proposals — roughly 14 per day. The ACB recovered Rs 1.76 crore in cash and Rs 88.82 lakh in gold from his residences in Surat and Gandhinagar. Chaudhari reportedly confirmed on the spot that the money came from bribes. Gujarat has positioned itself as India's solar energy model, the state that wrote the rulebook on clean power. The rulebook, it turns out, had a supplementary chapter: one that allowed the inspector to approve solar farms he had never seen, in exchange for cash he was accumulating across two home cities simultaneously.