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Power Hungry

Subansiri Hydel Project: Disaster On The Cards?

After a eight-year gap, work on the Subansiri dam has resumed much to the unhappiness of activists. Project cost has spiraled from Rs 6,900 crore in 2005 to 20,469 crore in 2019!

Subansiri Hydel Project: Disaster On The Cards?
Photograph by Surajit Sharma
Subansiri Hydel Project: Disaster On The Cards?
outlookindia.com
2019-11-15T11:04:20+05:30

Annual power allocation

  • 274 MW Arunachal Pradesh
  • 533 MW Assam
  • 193 MW Other NE states
  • 5500 MW Rest of India

***

Around October this year, mammoth machines lying idle for eight years whirred to life and workers with hand-held industrial tools resumed work. The stalled and long-delayed Lower Subansiri Hydro Electric Power Project at Ger­ukamukh, situated along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border, was back on track; it’s a project the government says will partly solve India’s electricity requirements. But for several organisations, the 2000-MW project in one the most seismologically active areas in the world is a disaster waiting to erupt. Independent exp­erts have been voicing concern over the pot­ential impact downstream of the project on the fast-flowing Subansiri, a wild tributary of the Brahmaputra, where people had been prospecting for gold for centuries. The government says too much time has been lost and, more imp­ortantly, all concerns have been taken care of.

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