Work on 9-km NHPC tunnel completed after 23-year delay

Abhinav Vashisht

Kullu, November 3

The work on a 9.05-km tunnel, which is part of a six-metre wide and 32-km-long head race tunnel (HRT) of the NHPC’s Parbati Hydroelectric Project–II (PHEP-II) between Barshaini and Siund villages in Kullu district, has been accomplished after 23 years. The work was being executed with the help of a tunnel boring machine (TBM) from Adit-II at Shilagarh in Kullu. The construction work was not completed due to leakages in the tunnel, contractual hassles and alleged cement and steel scams in the project. The work on other portions of the tunnel using the drill blast method was accomplished much earlier.

Rs 10k cr loss to country: Experts

• The delay in the project has caused a loss of more than Rs 10,000 crore to the country
• Himachal was to get 12 per cent free power as per the agreement and as such its loss also runs into several crores of rupees every year

A huge slush ingress into the tunnel had damaged the TBM in November 2006 when about 4 km excavation work had already been accomplished. At that time a Himachal Joint Venture (HJV), a subsidiary of Satyam company, was executing the project. It had hired Robbins company of the US to operate the TBM. The work was later awarded to Gammon India Ltd.

Sushil Kumar Shinde, the then Union Power Minister, had inspected construction carried out with the help of the TBM in May 2010 and advised the NHPC to speed up the work. The machine was restored several times but the boring work could not be completed, as only around 70 metres more was excavated till 2014 and that, too, at a huge cost.

The NHPC had sped up the pace of the construction of the Parbati Stage-II, which was hindered due to poor geological conditions at the TBM site of the project. Experts say that the delay in the project has caused a loss of more than Rs 10,000 crore to the country. “The state was to get 12 per cent free electricity as per the agreement and as such its loss also runs into several crores of rupees every year,” they add.

Meanwhile, NHPC Project Director Vishwajit Basu says that the PHEP-II is a run-of-the-river project meant to harness the water potential of the Parbati river in lower reaches. The river is to be diverted from a concrete gravity dam near Pulga village through a 32-km-long tunnel to a powerhouse near Siund. The project having a surface powerhouse consisting of four pelton turbine generation units of 200 MW each will generate 800 MW. The date of its commercial operation is assumed to be December 2024.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.

#Kullu