Delay in Mansa thermal project upsets Sukhbir
Vedanta company officials pulled up
SP Sharma/TNS

Banawali (Mansa), September 19
Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today pulled up the Vedanta Group for the delay in the construction of the 1980 MW thermal power project here. He said the first unit must be commissioned on April 13 (Baisakhi) next year.

Sukhbir flew to the upcoming Goindwal thermal project with top officers to take stock of the progress made in the construction work.

The first unit of the Rs11,000 crore project here that was to be commissioned within three years of the stone laying ceremony in 2008 has already been delayed by about a year.

Sukhbir held a meeting with officers of Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd and the Vedanta Group and asked them to speed up work so that all the three units of the super-critical project were commissioned in 2014. Power Secretary Anirudh Tiwari and PowerCom chief KD Chaudhri were among those present at the meeting.

It is learnt that annoyed at the delay in the construction work, Sukhbir told the company officials that he would visit the project again on December 15 and review the progress made. “The first unit to generate 660 MW of power will be commissioned on Baisakhi,” he said.

He asked the Power Secretary and the PowerCom chief to monitor the progress of the project every week. The Chinese SEPCO Electric Power Construction Corporation has been assigned the construction of the project on a turn-key basis. Sukhbir reiterated that Punjab would become power surplus once the thermal plants became operational. The 540 MW Sri Goindwal Sahib Thermal Plant being constructed at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore would be operational in May next and the 1,400 MW Rajpura Thermal Plant, being constructed by Larsen &Toubro at a cost of Rs 8,000 crore, would start producing power by the end of 2013.

Later, Sukhbir told mediapersons that the latest anti-pollution technology was being installed at the project. He said PowerCom would construct the 1320 MW thermal power project at Mukerian.