2 units of Sharavathy Project commissioned

By Our Staff Correspondent

GERUSOPPA (Uttara Kannada Dist), MAY 15. The Chief Minister, Mr. S. M. Krishna, said here on Tuesday that the Karnataka Power Corporation (KPC), of which he is the Chairman, had prepared an ambitious plan to add an additional power of 2000 MW with a total investment of Rs. 10,000 crores in the next five years to the State Power Grid to meet the increasing demand for power.

Addressing a gathering after dedicating the first two units of the Sharavathy Tail Race Project with an installed capacity of 60 MW each at Gerusoppa to the nation, he said the third unit of the project, which formed the final phase of the power projects in the Sharavathy Valley, was planned to be commissioned in October and the fourth by the end of March next.

He said the seventh unit of the Raichur Thermal Power Project with an installed capacity of 210 MW was scheduled to be completed by March 2003. Similarly, Alamatti Dam Power Project would be ready for commissioning by the end of 2003.

He said the Vijaynagar Power Project with a capacity of 500 MW, which was being implemented in the joint sector, would be dedicated to the nation by 2005. The Union and the State governments had given clearance to this project.

Mr. Krishna said that the Bidadi Gas-based 700 MW Power Project would be ready for commissioning by the end of 2005. In addition, a barge-mounted power project in the private sector with an installed capacity of 220 MW, and the power projects by the Tatas and the Jindal company with capacities of 80 MW and 100 MW respectively were in the offing.

Emphasising the need for working out cost effectiveness of new power projects before they were taken up to make power affordable for the common people, the Chief Minister explained the reasons why the previous Congress Government in which he was the Minister for Power, cancelled the agreement with the Cogentrix company on a power project.

He said there was criticism when the project was dropped after it was debated for nearly 14 years. He said the cost effectiveness (of the project) was the only reason for dropping the proposal which was planned to be handed over to the Cogentrix company.

Mr. Krishna referred to the predicament of the Maharashtra Government which now found itself trapped in an agreement on a power project with the Enron company and said that State (Maharashtra) had found itself in such a situation that even the Centre could not bail it out.

``We are lucky that we did not get trapped in a similar project with the Cogentrix. It is difficult to imagine what could have been the position of the KPC, if we had gone ahead with the agreement with the Cogentrix,'' he said.

Mr. Krishna said that it was for the reason of cost effectiveness that the proposed Alamatti Dam Power Project was handed over to the KPC when the offer made by TAPCO for its implementation was found to be ``extremely costly.''

He said that after the TAPCO offered to complete the 290 MW project at a cost of Rs.1400 crores, the KPC was asked to prepare the plan which it did with an estimated cost of Rs.700 crores. Immediately after that, the KPC was given the green signal to prepare the pre-survey of the project.

``If the project (Alamatti Dam Power Project) was handed over to TAPCO, it could have been profitable'' (which he said needed no elaboration), ``but it is the protection of the interest of common people which is of paramount interest to us. TAPCO may approach the court for the breach of agreement but we will fight it out there (court) also,'' he said.

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