Inland Power, the company in the eye of the storm since the Gola firing incident, has initiated repairing exercise at the plant site as the situation there has begun settling down on Thursday. A team of experts surveyed establishments that got damaged during the conflict taken place on Monday and reported to have ordered for replacing some of the equipments.
Following the incident, the mob of local villagers went out of control and besides, stone pelting the policemen it also damaged intake well, pipelines and generator belonging to the company. The damage caused the plant going for a closure.
“Since no progress could be made in order to repair the facilities, the management had decided to shut down the plant on Tuesday evening. There was no water meant for power generation. Situation over there was so that we could not hold the assessment and finally, it is being done on Thursday. The experts and engineers would prepare a report and send it to our top management seeking fresh requirements. Then only the plant can resume its operation,” said a DGM level official of Inland Power.
The power plant is generating 63 MW from its single operational unit which got supplied entirely to the State for distribution. Since the power generation has been stopped the company has reported the matter to the State Government through State load Dispatch Centre; the power sharing pool of different sources with the State.
“Our estimate suggests that due to the shut down, the company is incurring losses in the tune of `70 lakh per day which in any case would touch nearly two crore if we could restart power generation by Saturday morning. It takes time for a power plant to generate full load electricity after getting lit-up,” added the official.
Nonetheless politics continued on the issue even today when JVM chief Babulal Marandi with a delegation called on Chief Minister Raghubar Das. “The company has not adhered with the commitments it made to the villagers. The police instead of showing restraint opened fire on them killing at least two poor villagers. We have demanded from the CM to order a thorough judicial probe into the incident, murder cases be filed against the magistrate, policemen and management who were present over there and compensation of `50 lakh to those who were killed along with jobs,” said Marandi.
Following the incident, the Government had formed a Committee headed by Hazaribagh Divisional Commissioner Dr Pradeep Kumar. The panel after meeting locals at Gola and taking statements of the policemen injured has also consulted Inland Power management to know their side of story. “We are also trying to meet the Energy Secretary on this issue as soon as possible,” said a company representative.