Bhubaneswar, Sep 11 (UNI) Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan today requested Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to intervene personally and ensure the speedy approval of 1320 MW power project by the NTPC at Talcher.
In a letter to the Chief Minister, Mr Pradhan said the NTPC has a large presence in the State with an investment of over Rs 24,000 crore in the ongoing and proposed investment inTalcher with an investment of Rs.9785 crore.
The PSU, he said is proposing to set up an additional state-of-the-art, latest environmental norms compliant power station of 1320 MW at the existing location of NTPC.
The project,he said had been approved by the The NTPC Board on September 10,2018 and the project has obtained land, water and environmental and other statutory clearances.
But being a large project it requires the clearance by the High level Committee of the state government, the Union Minister said adding that unfortunately NTPC is still awaiting the clearance even though it has applied for approval on April 19, 2017.
He said lack of requisite clearance for such big ticket investments even after a lapse of 15 months will dampen the investment climate in Odisha and will send a wrong signal to the investors community.
The proposed power project is expected to make power available to the people of Odisha at a cheaper rate because of easy availability of coal and use of latest technology.
The project, he further said, is critical for the life and economy of the area as the existing power generating unit of the site are old and they might find themselves on the wrong side of stringent environmental norms which would be devastating for the local economy.
Mr Pradhan said in line with Prime Minister's vision of Purvodaya, Central Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) have come forward to make huge investments in various projects in Odisha.
Be it oil sector PSUs or SAIL or NALCO or NTPC, all of them have lined up high value projects that will change the industrial landscape of Odisha, he said and requested Mr Patnaik to approve NTPC project which will send the right signals about ease of doing business in the State.
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