Bangladesh Plunges into Darkness as Adani Outage Exacerbates Power Crisis

Bangladesh is facing severe power cuts, with some rural areas reporting up to 16 hours of load-shedding a day. The crisis intensified after an 800 MW unit of Adani Power's Godda plant in Jharkhand developed a technical fault on September 10. The unit returned on September 13, but another unit at Bangladesh's Rampal plant then went offline.

The government has blamed the BRICS fallout for the outage, with BNP acting secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi saying Prime Minister Tarique Rahman's decision not to attend the summit protected Bangladesh's dignity and sovereignty. However, India's Ministry of External Affairs gave a different account, saying Rahman received two separate invitations - one for a bilateral visit and another to attend the BRICS Summit as BIMSTEC chair.

The power crisis is not new to Bangladesh, but the current shortfall has at times crossed 2,500 MW. The problem is not just a lack of power plants; fuel availability, especially natural gas, is a major constraint. Gas accounted for around 44% of Bangladesh's electricity generation in 2024-25, but domestic gas production fell from 27.2 billion cubic meters in 2018-19 to 19.6 billion cubic meters in 2024-25.

India cannot simply fill Bangladesh's power shortage as it already supplies around 2,656 MW of electricity, and its transmission lines have fixed capacities. Additionally, producing additional electricity requires additional fuel, which is already under pressure due to high energy costs. India has also faced tight power-supply conditions in September.