It’s official now. The impasse over the Rs 5,500-crore joint venture (JV) between Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) and South India-based power major NLC India (NLCIL) for the 1,200 MW Raghunathpur thermal power plant has ended with the former walking out of the project.
NLCIL on Wednesday informed the stock exchanges that DVC had communicated that the company was no more interested in pursuing the JV agreement and would like to call it off on mutually agreed basis. NLCIL and DVC, around two years ago, had signed an agreement for the formation of a JV company for acquiring DVC’s Reghunathpur thermal power station.
The JV scheme had envisaged NLC India acquiring 74% stake in Raghunathpur project, while DVC retaining the remaining 26%. The DVC had been incurring losses due to the Raghunathpur power plant and hence, the JV was planned. However, owing to a delay in getting clearance for the proposal from the West Bengal government, the JV could not get off the ground. The Centre, West Bengal and Jharkhand are equal shareholders of DVC.
While both the Centre and Jharkhand had approved the JV scheme, Bengal did not follow suit, as it wanted DVC to resolve a pay-related dispute with a section of employees. Meanwhile, NLCIL had planned a capital expenditure of `1.29 lakh crore for increasing its mining and power generation capacities over a period up to 2025.
The lion’s share of additional capacity will come from coal and renewables. NLCIL had firmed up plans to make it big in the renewable energy sector through wind- and solar-based power plants, thereby curbing the dependency on lignite alone. The total revenue of the company for the nine-month period of 2017-18 stood at Rs 6,256.29 crore, compared with Rs 6,074.43 crore in the corresponding period of previous year, registering a growth of 2.99%. The company’s total profit after tax (PAT) during the nine-month period stood at Rs 956.78 crore compared with Rs 867.34 crore in the corresponding period of previous year, registering a growth of 10.31%.