By Santanu Ghosh
Work on the Rs 359crore hydel project to produce electricity by harnessing the Tuirial river came to a grinding halt in 2003 in the wake of a controversy over payment of compensation “at inflated rates” for acquisition of land for the project.
Mizoram chief minister Lalthanhawla said the project was cleared by the Centre after he had taken up the matter with leaders in New Delhi, including UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week.
The North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Ltd (Neepco) has been saddled with the responsibility to install the hydel plant with a revised outlay fixed at Rs 913 crore.
Though Neepco has decided to mobilize bulk of the resources for the Tuirial project by borrowing funds from banks and financial bodies, sub-marginal loans from the Centre and selling equities, officials of the company are still uncertain whether it would be able to meet the outlay.
A senior official of Neepco at its headquarters in Shillong last night said over phone that there would still be an unbridged gap between the envisaged outlay for the hydel project and funds to be mopped up from different sources.
The official said the project should be completed within three years provided the requisite funds are arranged.
The power tariff in the first year after commissioning of this much-vaunted project has been fixed at Rs 3.70 per unit.
The official, who did not wish to be named, said Neepco, which is almost certain that it would face a funds crunch for the project, would place its demand before the DoNER ministry and the Centre to bridge the gap between outlay and funds.
A senior official in the finance department of the Mizoram government pointed out that the funds from the DoNER ministry for the Tuirial project would be an additional grant besides the routine cash inflow for development projects in the hill state.
He said the government of Mizoram would get 12 per cent of the power generated from the hydel project free of cost.
Mizoram, at present, is a power-deficit state where the demand for power is 120MW while supply from various sources, including the state power department, is approximately 60MW.
The project envisages the construction of a 77-metre-high earthen dam across Tuirial, a tributary of the Barak.
A surface power station on the left bank of the river at the toe of this dam would be constructed at Bilkhawtlir for generation of 60MW of power at 45 per cent load factor.
0 comments:
Post a Comment