Faced with a financial crunch and meagre resources, the Uttarakhand government has decided to develop three major hydel projects of its hydropower generation company UJVN Ltd through joint ventures for a 42 year lease period.

The total investments in these three projects in Alaknanda Valley of the hilly Chamoli district would be around INR 4,500 crore to INR 5,000 crore.

As per report a decision to this effect was taken by a meeting of the state Cabinet held here last evening which was presided over by chief minister Mr BC Khanduri. This is for the first time that the government has chosen the joint venture route for UJVN, having an installed capacity of 1306 MW.

The meeting decided that the open tenders would be called for developing three projects 300 MW Bawla Nandprayag, 100 MW Nandprayag Langasu, 250 MW Tamaklata, with UJVN sharing 26% equity in the joint partnerships with private companies or PSUs.

Principal Secretary Power Mr Alok Kumar Jain told Business Standard that these companies would also have to give 10% free equity to UJVN to bring down the size of its actual investment to only 16% in the joint venture,. This means that UJVN will have to shell out only INR 226 crore in the joint ventures where the investments from other companies would be nearly INR 4,500 crore.

The total lease period for developing these projects would be 42 years, which includes 7 years for development of the project and 35 years for its operation.

(Sourced from BS)