Bengals’ Largest Solar Power Plant Allegedly Being Looted After Govt Sealed it

Kolkata: More than Rs 100 crores worth of central and state government investment may be going up in ashes in West Bengal’s Bankura as a state of the art solar power plant is being stealthily dismembered by local mafia allegedly in connivance with the local administration.

Madhusudan Chatterjee, a reporter with a local Bengali daily, who recently visited the power plant site at Mejia in Bankura district alleged that loot was going on in the power plant, which used to supply electricity in the power grid through the local Nandanpur grid, even as the administration kept mum over the issue.

The solar power plant, commissioned in 2017, has a 10 megawatt per day capacity.

Talking to Newsclick, West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) board member and former Managing Director Santipada Gana Choudhury claimed that the news was authentic and sad. He said that nor Centre or the state was willing to run the project even though there was only a technical fault that could be easily repaired and the plant can be made operational again.

Choudhury, who is a pioneering figure in the renewable energy sector in the country, said that the closure of the plant was more pathetic as West Bengal was at the bottom ranks in terms of solar power generation.

After the plant being non-operational for last eight to nine months, all 14 employees of the plant are without work and pay and spending days in poverty. At present, the computers, the doors and windows  of the plant are being taken away by the local mafia groups operating just yards away from the Mejia police station in Bankura.

Even a weighbridge to weigh the products under theft has sprung up in the area, complained the local residents. A mafia member named Mallu is allegedly the owner of the weighbridge, which is also working as a transshipment point for the theft.

“People are aghast at the non-interference of the police and administration in this heinous crime,”said Chatterjee who claimed to have witnessed the plunder.

The  power plant was constructed on a 52-acre plot near river Damodar in Telenda Purnea panchayat area. In the first phase, this power plant received a grant of Rs 68 crores, which included funds from both the Centre and state government. It was decided to build it as the largest solar power plant in the state. Once the state government took over its management, they gave it to the central government owned Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd. (BHEL).  When the power plant started its operation, it produced 10 mw of  power per day or 300 mw per month. BHEL did not  directly administer the plant but retendered it a company called APCO, which in turn retendered it to a company called Diamond, a Bankura-based security agency firm.

The agency started defaulting on wages of the workers and even the minimum number of staff posted at the power plant site did not get their wages, provident fund dues or ESI benefits.  The workers complained to BHEL who cited APCO as their contractor and called the APCO officials to their office.  Later the work contract given to Diamond company was cancelled before the state government’s representatives sealed the power plant.

Sometime after the sealing, unknown people have broken the lock and stolen the expensive equipment from the power plant; the stolen items are being weighed in the weighbridge and transhipped to unknown buyers.

Especially after December 28 last year, the issue of stealing had been discovered and now, open theft is happening. In the evening every day, the transformers, solar plate, many costly equipment are being dismantled and taken out of the project site. “Every day we are witnessing silently how the solar power project is being dismembered with tacit illegal support of the  administration,” alleged Ishwar Bidya, an  employee of the solar power plant.