NTPC yet to acquire land for two projects in Orissa - 4800 MW plant in Sundergarh district and 3200 MW plant in Dhenkanal district

National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), is struggling to acquire land for its two proposed super thermal power projects (STPP) in Orissa- 4800 MW plant at Darlipalli in Sundergarh district and 3200 MW plant at Gajmara in Dhenkanal district.The company is yet to acquire even a single acre of land for these two proposed projects and the sluggish pace of land acquisition is likely to delay the commissioning of these projects. It may be noted that in April this year, NTPC had announced to complete land acquisition for these two projects within six months. Both these projects were scheduled to be operational by 2016-17.

"NTPC is acquiring land on its own for the 3200 MW proposed to be set up at Gajamara but no land has been acquired yet for the project”, admitted a senior official of NTPC's Gajamara STPP. The Gajamara project needed 2900 acres of land and NTPC claimed to have conducted the gram sabha for this project in March this year. Similarly, the progress on land acquisition for the Darlipalli STPP is also far from satisfactory. "No land has been acquired till now for the 4800 MW Darlipalli STPP. Even notification under Section 4 (1) of the Land Acquisition Act is yet to be issued”, an official of NTPC's Darlipalli STPP told Business Standard.

The 4800 MW power plant coming up on around 3000 acres of land at Darlipalli will be commissioned in three phases. In each phase, 1600 MW (2x800) will be commissioned and all the three phases are scheduled to be commissioned by the end of the 12th Plan period (2016-17).

Presently, NTPC has obtained water clearance from the Orissa government for this project and deposited establishment charges for land acquisition to the state government to proceed with Section 4 (1) notification under the Land Acquisition Act. It has also conducted various studies like Environmental Impact Study (EIA), socio-economic study, topographical study, hydrographic study and seismic study. Orissa's share of power from these two upcoming power projects was yet to be finalized but under the existing guidelines of the Union ministry of power, the home state usually gets 30-32 per cent of the power generated. The navratna power utility, which has an installed capacity of 3460 MW in Orissa will pump over Rs 50,000 crore in generating additional capacity of 9320 MW in the state by the end of 2017.

Besides setting up two mega power projects at Darlipalli and Gajamara, NTPC is also scaling up the capacity of its existing thermal power station at Talcher by adding two supercritical units of 1320 MW capacity (2x660 MW). As far as capacity expansion of 1320 MW of its Talcher Thermal Power Station (TTPS) is concerned, NTPC has received water clearance from the state government on March 16 this year with revised conditions of power allocation. Apart from 50 per cent direct allocation, Orissa would also get 10 per cent of unallocated share from the Central sector.