The 4,000 mega watt Bedabahal ultra mega power project (UMPP) in Orissa, which has been held up because of want of clearances from the government, has finally received the green signal from the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF).
All the three coal blocks associated with the UMPP- Meenakshi A, Meenakshi B and the dipside of Meenakshi-lie in the go area where mining is permitted, the ministry has said.
The permission has come after the power ministry, in its bid to salvage the UMPP and restore investor confidence, worked out a compromise formula with the MoEF to get clearance for the captive coal blocks.
The power ministry has decided to separate out 200 hectare of densely forested land from the two captive declared as ?no go? areas by the environment ministry. The separation has been planted in a way that coal output from the blocks remains unaffected to feed the full 4,000 MW capacity under the UMPP.
?We are working on redrawing the boundary of coal blocks of Orissa UMPP to address concerns raised by the environment ministry. A proposal to carve 200 hectare of land out from the blocks has been submitted to the coal ministry to a certification whether the move will impact production. This will be handy at the time of processing the bids,? said an official in the power ministry on condition of anonymity.
Though the power ministry is yet to send a formal proposal to the MoEF, officials say that the plan is in its initial stages. ?Meenakshi A was in the go region from the very beginning and the other two were on the border line of no-go. We looked at the coal blocks in a cluster approach and the area was still in the no-go regions. However, the Power Finance Corporation (PFC) has now modified the plan and reduced 200 hectares of the 1,300 hecatres and the whole area has become go and hence, permitted,? confirmed an environment ministry official.
The Orissa UMPP is in the thick of controversy with environment ministry putting two of its three captive blocks (Meenakshi B and dip side of Meenakshi) in the ?no go? zone where mining would not be permitted.
PFC, the nodal agency for UMPPs, invited bids for the project early last year but has not been able to complete the process so far due to lack of clarity over captive blocks. In the meanwhile, the conclusion of initial bid process (RFQ) has been postponed over seven times with latest deadline expiring on May 30.
It was last year when MoEF and the coal ministry had jointly undertaken an exercise to overlay the forest cover map on boundaries of nine coalfields in the country and identified various coal blocks as category A (no-go areas) and category B (go areas).
As per the exercise, 449 coal blocks covering about 3.8 lakh hectare were categorised as category B of the total number of 602 coal blocks covering about 6.48 lakh hectare.
In fact, this clearance to the UMPP would also mean that two other power projects in the vicinity of the UMPP ? one proposed by NTPC and the other by Orissa Power Generation Corporation (OPGC) ? will face fresh problems from the environment ministry.