)
The final estimate has been sent to state Energy Department for administrative approval of the project.
In December last year, the national PSU had asked for 745.15 acres of land for ash dyke, reservoir area, ash pipeline corridor and railway line corridor for its 1600 Mw super thermal power project coming up at Gajamara in Dhenkanal district. However, IPICOL had assessed the land requirement at 538.34 acres and had asked it to revise its land requirement as per guidelines issued by Central Electricity Authority (CEA). Subsequently, NTPC scaled down its requirement to 717 acre.
The power generating utility wanted 402 acres for ash dyke and 134.4 acres for reservoir area in its revised application. Similarly, it had put the requirement for its ashpipe line corridor and railway line corridor at 32.57 acre and 144.53 acres respectively. IPICOL cut down the land size significantly for reservoir from 134 acre to 101 acre, with other small changes in land requirement sought by NTPC.
Notification under Section 4 (1) of Land Acquisition Act has already been issued for acquisition of private land for the Gajamara project. NTPC has urged the state government to expedite issue of 6 (1) notification. The Gajamara project needs 1013 acres of land. Of the total land needed for the project, 795.85 acres are privately-owned. The land is to be acquired in four affected villages- Talabarkote (440.23 acres), Patra bhag (194.61 acres), Manipur (99.46 acres) and Siaria (61.55 acres). NTPC has to fork out Rs 152.54 crore for acquisition of the private land and has promised to set up a power engineering institute at Dhenkanal that is linked to its Gajamara plant.
The utility major is setting up another super thermal power plant at Darlipalli in western Odisha's Sundargarh district. This plant is expected to be commissioned by 2018.
NTPC has secured coal linkage for this project in the form of Dulanga coal block with mine capacity of seven million tonnes per annum (mtpa) under command area of Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and Pakri Barwadih block in Bihar's Hazaribagh district with 12.5 million tonne per annum (mtpa).
--EOM--
