After being stalled due to agitations over land acquisitions, the West Bengal Power Development Corporation's (WBPDCL) thermal power project at Katwa has finally got off the ground.
The project's viability at the location had been severely jolted last year as significant resistance, in the wake of the Singur fiasco, had halted the procurement of land. Opposition parties had then said that the notified land was fertile. Situated in the coal-rich Burdwan district, the Katwa project is critical to the state's ambitious industrilisation drive in the near future.
On Thursday, however, state power secretary GD Gautama indicated that substantial headway had been made. “The Katwa project is on track and the land acquisition process has already started,” Gautama said on the sidelines of a CII seminar here.
Of the 1,035 acres that is required for the project, over 350 acres have already been acquired, WBPDCL Managing Director Debashis Sen said. “The land acquisition process is going quite well and we are in constant touch with the district administration. We expect the entire process to be completed within a short period of time. Work on erecting a boundary wall around the plant size will begin in the next few days,” he added. While the power utility had initially planned to set up a 2X660 MW plant on a 1,600-acre site at Katwa, problems regarding availability of land have led to a reworking on the entire blueprint for the project.
“We are trying to work out how much power we can generate with the land that is available, and consequently, the project cost is yet to be defined. But we will use the latest technology to ensure maximum utilisation of the resources,” Sen said.
WBPDCL has also commissioned the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Kolkata to undertake a socio-economic study of the location to help create a holistic solution for land-losers at Katwa. Meanwhile, the Burdwan District administration, which is overseeing the acquisition process, said that there had been no resistance from the land-losers recently.
“The compensation package is being accepted now. The first phase of the acquisition is complete and we expect to complete the second and third phase over the next few months,” Burdwan District Magistrate Rajesh Kumar Sinha said.
