Untold Facts About Dams in Arunachal-I, II & III

(Followings were carried as 3 parts series in The Sentinel ARUNACHAL, with dateline mentioned below)

ITANAGAR, Oct 18: Irrespective of the attempt to pawn the interests of Arunachalees by Congress-led Central government, to gain political mileage in the ensuing assembly election in Assam which has been widely articulated in many ways by the Cabinet Minister for Environment and Forest, Jairam Ramesh, it is important that facts related to Memorandum of Agreements (MoAs) and Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) signing spree needs to be laid bare to the people of Arunachal Pradesh.

Close scrutiny of the details available with The Sentinel shows that MoAs and MoUs have two distinct time period, that is, Pre-March’2007 and Post-March’2007. These periods have specific reference to Gegong Apang’s iron-fist regime that melted away for the second time and Dorjee Khandu’s reign of power for the first time on April 03, 2007.

To begin with, during Apang’s regime, Government of Arunachal Pradesh (GoAP) signed up 23 (twenty three) projects with installed capacity of 20,560 (twenty thousand and five hundred sixty) mega watt (MW). Out of these, 18 (eighteen) were executed through MoAs route and 5 (five) projects were through tender. This was all done in 11 months at an average rate of almost 2 projects per month and of around 1,900 MW per month!

Genesis of MoAs signing spree started in March 22, 2006 when Apang- led government hammered out 5 (five) MoAs on a single day with total installed capacity of 4,850 MW with corporate giants like DS Constructions Ltd for Siyom Projects, JP Associates for Siyom and Siang, Reliance for Siyom. Without tender, Government surrendered itself to DS Construction and allotted 1,000 MW, JP was allotted 2,150MW and another 1,700 MW was allotted to Reliance. It is alleged that all these MoAs were signed at New Delhi, not in Itanagar or in any part of Arunachal Pradesh.

Another astonishing fact is that rate of upfront money and processing fee per MW was arbitrarily fixed at Rs 31,000 only. At that throwaway rate, GoAP could collect only around Rs 15 crore in a single day and lost out on an equal amount. Now the question is: who decided the rate? Was there a third party valuation of the projects? If not, is there a way of recovering the huge monetary loss?

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ITANAGAR, Oct 19: Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister for Environment and Forests has been trying to make Bt Brinjal case out of hydro projects in Arunachal Pradesh despite the fact that two are as different as chalk and cheese. Though he never visited the State for dam consultation yet it is intriguing to note that he submitted a letter to Prime Minister’s office expressing his reservations on hydro projects, based on inputs from a specific group in the State. However, it may be put on record that not many groups were present at Gauhati consultation that has been referred to in the same letter. A particular group that he has quoted in his letter belongs to the Adi belt; and given his proximity to former Union Minister of State, Omak Apang it is only logical that he would have given such biased opinion to the extent of generalizing the entire projects across Arunachal Pradesh. Notwithstanding his views and views of certain groups, it is pertinent to bring the facts related to dam and it’s MoAs in public domain.
As reported yesterday in this daily, MoA signing spree started on March 2006 yet it took full 8 months for former Chief Minister Gegong Apang to start a fair and standard process of tendering. Apang started the tendering process for hydro-projects in November’06 that saw huge participation of corporate giants and its subsidiary businesses. Private sector players like Mountain Fall, Laimg-O, Reliance Energy Ltd, Madhucon Ltd, Lanco Ltd, Avandika Contractors, SEW Constructions Ltd, KSK Electricity Fin, Shalivahana Projects Ltd, SLS Power Ltd and GMR Energy Ltd etc made beeline to this non-descript State.
However, sources informed that these projects tendering were brokered by a former Union Minister of State and his close aide from Assam, who is now settled somewhere in South of India.

To Apang’s credit and better business sense, this time upfront money was raised to Rs 91,000 per MW. In-between November 2006 and January 2007, Apang’s government put on tender 4,185 MW of power to these private developers. Catch in all these projects were the short tender notice ranging between 10-12 days, which were far below industry standard for such large projects. Nevertheless, this time, GoAP lapped up another Rs 38 crores. Larger question still remains whether it was a fair valuation of the projects or was it through a cartel that projects were distributed? Prior to that, Apang’s Government signed three Memorandum of Agreements (MoAs) with a lone developer, Bhilwara Group, on October 22, 2006 over the same river, Nyamjangchu, without tendering. For record, in the month of September, 2006 too GoAP indulged in 7 (seven) MoAs with PSUs including NHPC’s Dibang Project of 3000 MW and NTPC’s Etalin Project of 4000 MW, though apparently couple of these projects changed hands at a later stage. However, this daily could not find any records related to upfront money on all the projects with PSUs. Was there upfront money involved? If yes, where is it? If no, why not?

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ITANAGAR, Oct 20:  Post March 2007, Dorjee Khandu replaced Gegong Apang on the ‘hot chair’ of Chief Ministership. Interestingly, he too went about with signing MoUs and MoAs for developing hydro-power projects left and right. Data and information available with The Sentinel from May 18, 2007 to February 22, 2008, reveal that the Khandu-led government cleared 47 projects with total power generation capacity of 6151 MW at an average of 130 MW per project. The biggest project cleared was the 3,000 MW Demwe Project that went to Athena Energy, through tender route. The lowest project was 7 MW Sangkang Rong in West Kameng that went to Patel Engineering through the MoA route. Only 4 projects, all of which were more than 100 MW in Dibang Valley, were awarded through tender. The tender notice period was raised from 10-12 days to 46 days. Sisiri (222 MW) went to Soma EnterPublish Postprise; and Emra-I (275MW), Emra-II (390MW) and Demwe (3000MW) went to Athena Energy. As per documents rest of the 43 projects were below 100 MW and were awarded through MoAs.

These MoAs and tenders attracted many private players —old and new —including KSK Energy, Adishankar Power Pvt Ltd, ECI Engg, SEW Energy, Velcan Energy Ltd, India Bulls Real Estate Ltd, KVK Energy Ltd, Sai Krishnodaya Industries Pvt Ltd, Tuff Energy Pvt. Ltd, Raj Ratna Metals & Alloys Ltd., Energy Development Corporation Ltd., Soma Enterprise Ltd., Abir Constructions and Athena Group. Couple of corporate giants that went back empty handed includes biggies like Gammon India Ltd, IL&FS and the Hyderabad based GVK Power.

Very much like his predecessor Apang, Khandu stuck with the unscientific rate of Rs 91,000 per MW as upfront money. However, on tendered projects, upfront money varied between Rs 3.1 lakh to Rs 1.6 lakh per MW which was higher and better. Thus, during these 9 months of ‘hydropower sell-out’, Khandu government collected Rs 133.95 crores.  Significantly, MoAs were signed in blocks of projects. Four projects totaling up to 304 MW were signed on June 30, 2007. Less than 3 months later, another 6 projects of 295 MW were signed up on September 11. But biggest and most significant dates are December 27, 2007 and January 12, 2008 when the government signed up 8 projects (331MW) and 5 projects (210MW) respectively.

Another unknown facet of ‘hydropower sell-out’ is the decentralization of process by Khandu government. Out of the 43 MoAs, 31 were based on recommendations of political biggies of respective areas that included a particular Member of Parliament (MP) who alone recommended 7 projects; and another 24 projects had the recommendations of local MLAs. Is that the reason why most of the legislators are keeping quiet on dam issues? Is that a reason why MLAs cutting across party lines came together on same dais at Pangin rally in support of dam and its developers, against protestors? If that be the case, common people need to ask their legislators to come out with the truth and Khandu government should make public a white paper on ‘hydro-projects’

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