The markets in Uttarkashi remained closed on Thursday in support of the demand for completion of the Lohari Nagpala power project which has been hanging fire since February this year. The local parliamentarian Vijay Bahuguna along with other Congress leaders is spearheading the movement of getting the work on this project re-started which is being constructed by the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) on Bhagirathi river.

Talking to ‘The Indian Express’, Bahuguna said, “The project is located in a district which has a border with China and Nepal. It has already provided direct employment to at least 1,000 local people and about 500 people from outside. It has also generated economic upliftment of the area by providing business opportunities to the local population.”

Bahuguna has rushed a letter in the matter to the Congress President Sonia Gandhi in which he has pointed that the project was inaugurated in 2004 and the work on it had started in 2005. However, it was during the BJP regime that the work was stalled two projects of Pala Maneri and Bhairon ghati last year after an agitation by noted environmentalist Prof. GD Aggarwal. Subsequently, the work on Lohari Nagpala project was also stalled.

“The project has got all statutory clearances,” the letter says. Bahuguna has also claimed that there is no threat of the uninterrupted flow of Bhagirathi being disrupted by the execution of the project. Bahuguna has asserted that the project has already incurred an expenditure of about Rs 400 crore and has already committed expenditure of more than Rs 2,000 crore by way of allotment of works to various agencies including foreign ones. “The construction activity of the project is in advance stage and it is scheduled to start generation by the year 2011-12,” the letter says.

... contd.