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Power project: PM ‘unhappy’ over failure to implement directive

Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is understood to be “unhappy” with the Ministry of Power for having “failed” to put in action a directive by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) issued over a month ago to send an appropriate advisory to the power sector organisations changing the definition of Commercial Operation Date (COD) of projects.

Highly placed sources said that the Prime Minister was upset at the manner in which the Power Ministry has been describing the “commissioning projects” and its failure to set right the situation. The PMO had on June 11 written to the Secretary Power, Anil Razdan that the commissioning of a power project should be taken on record only with COD as its relevant milestone. However, despite a lapse of over one month, the PMO’s directive has been lying confined to official files without any appropriate action being taken by the Secretary Power.

The matter of commissioning of power projects has assumed “serious dimensions” as investigations have revealed that out of the 6,620 MW of coal-based capacity projects having “commissioned” during 2007-08, nearly 58 per cent of them are still not producing even a single unit of energy making a mockery of the whole process. Major power projects, including those by Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, that have been dedicated to the nation are actually not even producing a single unit of power.

For instance, 500 MW Bellary power project in Karnataka was officially “commissioned” in December 2007 but is not producing a single unit of power till date. The 210 MW Bakeshwar project in West Bengal was commissioned on record in December 2007 but has yet not begun generating power. The 250 MW Raigarh power project in Chhattisgarh was “commissioned” in March 2008 but has yet not started commercial production.

The 500 MW Birsinghpur project in Madhya Pradesh was official commissioned in June 2007 but has yet not commenced production. The 500 MW Sipat power project unit 4 was commissioned in May 2007 but began production in June 2008 after the intervention of the Minister of State for Power, Jairam Ramesh.

Similarly, the 500 MW Kahalgaon unit 6 was declared commissioned in March 2008 but has yet not started generating power.

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