State bats for N-power plant
Naveen S Garewal
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 22
The Punjab Government is seriously perusing a nuclear power plant for the state. After the SAD-BJP government in Punjab announced a reversal from the stand taken on the issue by the previous Congress regime, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his Cabinet colleagues have asked the Centre to build a “light water nuclear reactor” in Punjab. Punjab is willing to provide all infrastructural support for the project.

The state is feeling all the more left out after the Central Government has, in principle, approved the Kumharia site in Fatehabad district of Haryana for setting up of a nuclear power project. At the Power Ministers’ Conference held in New Delhi last week, Punjab put up a case before Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, saying that the state’s development would suffer without adequate power.

Though Punjab is hoping to become power surplus over the next four to five years, after the commissioning of the four ongoing power projects, it feels that with the growing demand for electricity, both in the industrial and domestic sectors, only a nuclear plant will be able to keep pace with the growing demand.

Just before the Chief Minister left on a week-long foreign tour, he instructed his son-in-law and Punjab’s Minister for Food Adesh Partap Singh Kairon to make a formal request to Shinde at the Power Ministers’ Conference. Punjab has told the Centre that it would like a plant for itself, but it would also be interested in investing for a share in the Banswara nuclear plant in Rajasthan or the Kumharia in Haryana.

Punjab has reportedly told Shinde that if people in Kumharia did not want the plant to come up there, the same could be shifted to Punjab.

Punjab is expecting to produce 6,480 MW with the four thermal plants coming into operation. “Two thermal plants have already been allotted to private builders on BOO (Build, Own & Operate) basis, Letter of Intent (LOI) for Rajpura Thermal Plant will be issued in few days. But work allotment for the Gidderbaha Project has to be deferred for the moment for want of coal linkages.”

Besides the nuclear plant, Punjab is also lobbying with the Centre to set up thermal units in the state that would enrich the state by at least 2,500 MW. Further Punjab has demanded another 1,500 MW from the 4,000 MW integrated coal pit head thermal plant to be set up by NTPC at LARA in Chhattisgarh as committed by the Prime Minister.

Badal had recently announced that experience from across the world had shown that the nuclear plants were safe and this was the only way to keep pace with the growing needs of power.

The Congress government’s stand has been that being a border state and that, too, with a high-density population, a nuclear plant should not be housed here, but it was not aware of the possibility of granting Punjab a share from a plant to be set up in Rajasthan or any other state.