Business
Jharkhand says land no reason for project exit, Reliance Power disagrees
Ranchi, April 29
Even as Jharkhand Chief
Secretary Rajiv Gauba said on Wednesday that land could not be the
reason for Reliance Group's exit from the Tilaiya power project, company
sources said just 17 percent of the required 2,500 acres was
transferred and physical possession was also elusive.
"We can't
believe that land was issue for the withdrawal of Reliance from the
ultra mega power project. Reliance needed 2,500 acre of land. We have
already transferred 478 acres," the chief secretary told reporters here,
a day after Reliance Power announced its exit from the project.
Company
sources pointed out that while the total land required was 2,500 acres,
only 417 acres was transferred, which is is not even 17 percent.
Compared with the total land requirement of 17,000 acres, including coal
mines, this constituted only 2.5 percent.
The chief secretary
also sought to allude to tariff being the real reason for the
withdrawal, adding that the company had applied for power tariff
revision to Central Electricity Authority in September 2013 and had
raised the matter with the energy secretary on April 17 this year.
Company
sources, however, denied any detailed discussion on the issue of tariff
in the April 17 meeting and that the focus of that was on land alone.
"Just a brief mention was made. It lasted barely two minutes. The chair
simply put it on record," a company source said.
Another matter
raised by the state government on Wednesday was over imminent allocation
of 1,200 acres of forest land, which was in the pipeline, and linking
the withdrawal to Reliance Group's inability to pay Rs.300 crore for the
same.
The company strongly refuted this claim as well. The
company official the said price Rs.300 crore was not even intimated and
therefore the question of inability to pay did not arise. This, the
official said, was a mis-statement to divert the focus away from
prolonged non-performance.
Meanwhile, the state government also
said there were many suitors for the power project, even as the central
government's NTPC, formerly National Thermal Power Corp, staked claim
for the 3,960-MW thermal electricity generation venture.
"We are
more than willing to come on board," Arup Roy Choudhury, chairman and
managing director of NTPC, said on the margins of a conference in New
Delhi. "There is a new government. There is a paradigm shift," Choudhury
added, referring to the new regime of chief minister Raghubar Das.
Reliance
Power had said in a statement on Tuesday that it had pursued in vain
with the government for five-and-half years and held more than 25 review
meetings. But there was no movement forward. It said that, based on the
present estimates, the project cannot be completed before 2023-24.
Even
the NTPC chairman admitted to some irritants but was hopeful. "Earlier
there were problems and even NTPC faced it. But going forward, these
issues will be resolved," Choudhury said at the event of All India
Management Association.
The chief secretary said all the deputy
commissioners of all the districts and other officials had already been
asked to be clear in mindset so as to facilitate land acquisition and
the other needs of investors.
"Around 10,000 MW of power plants
of both private and public sector are in the pipeline. We are committed
to fast-track the process of land acquisition and remove other
bottlenecks like forest clearance to facilitate the investors."
"We're here to make the investment process easy."