Local issues impact NTPC's Rs 4,750-crore Assam project

The plant part of its ambitious plan to ramp up generation capacity by 35% to 55,000 Mw by March 2017

More than seven years after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone of the 750 Mw Bongaigaon power plant at Kokrajhar in Assam, the project is nowhere near commissioning. The Rs 4,750-crore project is power generator NTPC Ltd's maiden North-Eastern venture.

The power plant is part of the company’s ambitious plan to ramp up generation capacity by 35% to 55,000 Mw by March 2017. Its progress has been severely hit by a host of issues including frequent bandhs, mass exodus of workforce, heavy monsoon and slow progress of civil works by contractors, the company told the power ministry recently.

NTPC Ltd has already invested close to Rs 3,800 crore in the project which was supposed to have been commissioned in July 2011. India’s largest power generator, in an e-mail response to a Business Standard questionnaire, confirmed the delays. “The commissioning of the first unit was scheduled for early 12th Plan. It is now anticipated in financial year 2014-15,” it said.

However, latest data on status of large infrastructure projects sourced from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) shows the project would be commissioned only in October 2015, more than four years after the original date of commissioning in July 2011 and at least seven months later than what NTPC expects. The company also said it is keeping the local administration informed of the difficulties faced by it.

NTPC’s team has already lost 182 days (6 months) of work to frequent bandhs called by local outfits since February 2008. Another 143 days of work (less than five months) were lost owing to local disturbance and mass exodus since July 2012. The company told the ministry that full remobilization of agencies at the project site is yet to happen.

The delay comes even as the orders for supplying equipment package for three units of 250 Mw capacity each were placed on Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) as early as 2008. However, according to MoSPI, the project has been successful in achieving only five of the 28 key milestones for development.

The Bongaigaon project was to use a mix of coal from Eastern Coalfields and Margherita Coalfields in Assam. Coal in the state being high in sulphur and low in ash content, exact opposite of the coal in rest of the country, the project was to be developed using de-sulphurisation technique for the first time.