Power units hope for state
SUDHIR KUMAR MISHRA

Ranchi, Feb. 1: Jharkhand’s loss could be Bengal’s gain.

The Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) has decided to shift to Bengal’s Raghunathpur two units that were to be added to a thermal power plant in Jharkhand, apparently because of water shortage.

Subrata Biswas, the chairman of the Centre-owned DVC, informed the Jharkhand authorities last Saturday that the planned units of the Koderma plant would be shifted to Raghunathpur in Bengal’s Purulia. He told Jharkhand deputy chief minister Raghubar Das, who had called the meeting in a last-ditch bid to retain the project, that Koderma did not have adequate water.

Senior project officials had also concluded that setting up a new reservoir at the spot — one of the options suggested to solve the water problem — would not be feasible, Biswas is said to have told Das, also the state’s power minister.

The two units, of 660MW each, are to be commissioned during the Twelfth Plan (2012-2017). “Rules require at least 10 per cent of the power produced by DVC units to be supplied to local consumers. Therefore, the decision to transfer the proposed units to Raghunathpur would amount to Jharkhand losing 132MW of power in addition to several hundred potential jobs,” a senior DVC official in Calcutta said today.

This means Bengal, hit by falling generation in recent years, stands to get an assured supply of at least 132MW.

Sources said the shift was yet to be approved by the DVC board. A fresh project report will also have to be drawn up, but the groundwork is in full swing, they added. Reliance Power Ltd, the Anil Ambani-controlled firm, will be involved in Raghunathpur. PSU Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd had been picked in Koderma.

The DVC’s move has, however, raised some questions in Jharkhand. A senior state official wondered what took the corporation so long to realise that Koderma didn’t have enough water.