Under the contract Punj Lloyd will
provide underground civil work,
structural and architectural work for
the buildings, piling and foundations
for over ground civil, construction of
the auditorium and administration
building, the combined heat and
power office-cum-workshop and
O&M workshop in the offsite area.
NTPC, in April 2008, had placed a
330-crore order on SPML Infra Ltd
(then Subhash Projects & Marketing
Ltd) for civil works relating to three
units relating to the coal-fired project
at Salakati in Kokrajhar district of
Assam. The power plant, NTPC's first
in northeast India, was earlier
scheduled to fully commission by July
2011. However, there were major
delays in executing the civil works
with SPML Infra citing operational
difficulties like strikes, bandhs and
protests coming from a politically
instable situation in Assam, apart
from heavy rains in the region.
SPML's mandate involved execution
of main plant, civil works and offsite
civil works package, pile foundation,
etc. It also included construction of all
heavy structures, foundation units
like turbine/generator, boilers,
chimney, mill and bunkers, clear
water pump house and a number of
buildings. It was not immediately
known how much work SPML had
completed when the contract was
revoked earlier this year.
The 3x250-mw Bongaigaon
project, which is coming on the site
of Assam State Electricity Board's
defunct plant, is expected to now
commission in the XII Plan period.
The first unit, however, might turn
operational within the ongoing
Plan period.
The main plant equipment is being
supplied by Bharat Heavy Electricals
Ltd. A highlighting fact of the
Bongaigaon project is that it will run
mainly on coal sourced from Assam's
Margherita fields. This coal is said to
be the best in the country with a
calorific value that twice that of any
other variety of Indian coal.