Govt to speed up land acquisition for NTPC projects

After being assured of 50 per cent power allocation from two super thermal power projects proposed by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in Orissa, the state government has braced itself to expedite land acquisition work for these plants.

An inter-departmental committee meeting of the state government under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary B K Patnaik was held recently to speed up land acquisition work for NTPC projects.

NTPC has proposed to set up a 4,800 MW plant at Darlipalli in Sundergarh district and 3,200 MW plant at Gajmara in Dhenkanal district.

“We have asked the collectors of Sundergarh and Dhenkanal to speed up land acquisition work for NTPC's projects proposed at Darlipalli and Gajamara. An inter-departmental committee meeting consisting of officials of the departments of energy, revenue and health was held on Tuesday to take stock of progress of NTPC projects,” said G Mathivathanan, secretary (energy).

NTPC is going to upgrade the district headquarter hospital at Sundergarh and set up an intensive care unit within it, he said.

The 4,800 MW power plant coming up on around 3,000 acres of land at Darlipalli will be commissioned in three phases. Each phase consists of 1,600 MW (2x800) and all the three phases are scheduled to be completed by the end of the 12th Plan period (2016-17).

The Gajamara project needed 2,900 acres of land and NTPC claimed to have conducted the gram sabha for this project in March this year.

The navratna power utility, which has an installed capacity of 3,460 MW in Orissa will pump over Rs 50,000 crore in generating additional capacity of 9,320 MW in the state by the end of 2017.

Besides setting up two new mega power projects, NTPC is also scaling up the capacity of its existing thermal power station at Talcher by adding two supercritical units of 1,320 MW capacity (2x660 MW).