By Shambhu Nath Choudhary

Ranchi, Mar 10 (IANS): Hundreds of crores have been spent in the last 23 years on setting up the National Thermal Power Corporation's (NTPC) power plant at Tandwa in Jharkhand's Chatra district, but till date no electricity has been generated from it.

Preparations were underway to start power generation from the first unit of the plant this month itself, but it seems unlikely due to a violent clash between the locals, whose properties were acquired for setting up the plant, and the police on March 7.

The agitated locals set ablaze 56 small and big vehicles deployed at the plant and vandalised the offices. A total of 27 people were injured from both sides in the clashes between the police and the agitating displaced people.

After the violent confrontation, the situation in the project and the surrounding areas are tense. The administration has imposed prohibitory orders in six villages affected by the project.

So far, seven people have been arrested in connection with the violence. Also, an FIR has been registered against 100 named and 800 unidentified persons.

Police are conducting flag marches in the areas around the project ever since the incident. However, 60 per cent of the staff are not coming to the office.

In such a situation, it is almost certain that the proposed trial of the first unit of the plant in March would be postponed.

The project, ever since its foundation stone was laid in 1999, has remained in disputes. People, whose properties were acquired for setting up the plant, have been holding protests for the last two decades raising demands such as financial compensation, rehabilitation and jobs.

On March 6, 1999, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had laid its foundation stone and people were hoping that a new chapter of development would begin in the area, which is infamous for Naxalism and backwardness. The target was to make the plant operational by 2002-2003.

Three units of the power plant are being installed here, aiming to produce 1,980 MW of electricity. And it was scheduled that the trial of the first unit, having the capacity of 660 MW, would commence in March 2022.

Equipped with modern technology, for the first time in the country, the thermal power plant is being established using the air-cooled condenser system technology that would bring down the water consumption to just 25 per cent.

With the completion of the project, apart from Jharkhand, electricity would also be supplied to Bihar, Odisha, Bengal and Northeast.

For the project, the land was mainly acquired from six villages and at that time the old law of land acquisition was in force.

Meanwhile, the government made a new law regarding land acquisition, wherein there is a provision that if the project for which the land has been acquired does not get started within five years, then the land will be returned to the farmers.

When the work of the project started after seven years due to delay in land acquisition and several other reasons, disputes erupted over compensation, rehabilitation, jobs to the affected. The work of the project continued to be affected due to dharnas, demonstrations, agitations.

In the last 23 years, there have been more than one hundred confrontations between the NTPC Management, Administration, Police and displaced persons. Also there were numerous incidents of firing, lathi charge and violence.

There were several agreements between NTPC, the administration and the villagers, but the dispute was never fully resolved.

In the meantime, compensation has been paid to most of the ryot or displaced persons. However, the project continued at a slow pace amid the regular interruptions.

About a year and a half ago, the dispute regarding the compensation for the acquired land erupted again. The organisation of the displaced locals started the agitation, saying the compensation received earlier was inadequate.

They intalled tents in front of the main gate of the NTPC project and have been continuously staging a sit-in for the last 14 months.

A senior official at NTPC says that the ryots from whom the land was acquired were given compensation in 2015 itself. "There is no such law that compensation should be given again for the same land. It's just not possible."

The agitating farmers have three main demands.

The first is that they should be paid compensation at the rate of Rs 20 lakh per acre and the ryots who have not been paid the compensation should be paid at the new rate along with interest.

The second demand is "each displaced family should be given a uniform rehabilitation package as presently the amount is being given to the people of different areas at different rates".

Similarly their third demand is "Compensation in lieu of missing raiyati land, Gairmajarua Khas land, and houses, trees, ponds and wells situated on that land; 75 per cent grant to displaced ryots in NTPC-run schemes, and employment for every displaced family in NTPC".