Matukumilli Sri Bharat, younger son-in-law of senior actor and Telugu Desam Party MLA Nandamuri Balakrishna, is in deep soup with Andhra Bank giving a newspaper notification seeking to auction the assets of his power project at Garividi for allegedly defaulting payment of Rs 13 crore loan to the bank.

Apart from Sri Bharat, the bank named his wife Tejaswini and a few others connected with his power plant – VBC Renewable Energy – as the defaulters of the loan.

Bharat, who contested as TDP candidate in the recent Lok Sabha elections from Visakhapatnam parliamentary constituency, blamed it on AP Transco for the losses incurred by the company.

Reacting to a comment made by YSR Congress party MP V Vijay Sai Reddy on twitter that describing him as a thief who had looted public money, Bharat said the outstanding loan instalments of the power project with the bank amounted to only Rs 2 crore.

“But the outstanding dues from AP Transco for our power project for the power it had supplied was Rs 3 crore. Had AP Transco cleared our dues to the power project, we could have repaid the bank instalments completely,” Bharat said.

He pointed out that as a young entrepreneur, he had set up a small 3 MW solar power project at Garividi with the encouragement given by his father.

“We entered into an agreement with APTransco to supply power in 2016 and have been supplying power to the grid, but we have not been getting the money for the power we had sold to APTransco,” he said.

“Despite the government being unable to pay dues due to financial difficulties, it is very sad that I have been accused of stealing people’s money. Many businessmen in our state are unable to pay salaries to the employees due to pending bills. As an auditor, you know how difficult it is to run the company under these circumstances. Please encourage the young entrepreneurs, instead of making wild allegations,” Bharat said.