Yet another green power project begins in North-East

The Monarchak gas-driven power project in Tripura started functioning on Sunday, 13 years after its foundation stone was laid.

The 101-MW North Eastern Electric Power Corporation project is the third gas-driven power project in the region after Palatana, also inTripura, and Kathalguri in Assam. The foundation stone of the Rs 1,000-crore project were laid in 2002 when Atal Bihar Vajpayee was the prime minister. Suresh Prabhu, the then central power minister, had laid the stone as part of Vajpayee’s special thrust on the development of the North-east.

The project, however, had missed its deadline twice—in 2005 and 2007—and the Centre had even thought of scrapping it. It was only after the Tripura government’s pressure that the then UPA government put it on a fast track in 2010. Commercial production is set to begin at the project within a month.

However, the project’s capacity was later reduced to 280MW from 500 MW after the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation decided to begin its own project in Palatana and decrease the gas allocation for the former.