State to get ₹850 cr benefits from Shahpur Kandi every yr: PSPCL
PATIALA: With the deadlock between Punjab and Jammu Kashmir ending over the issue of the construction of the Shahpur Kandi dam, the project, once completed, will yield direct annual benefits to the tune of ₹850 crore to Punjab besides checking the flow of the Ravi waters to Pakistan, the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) has said.
The project is likely to be completed in the next three years, will also pay dividends to the state in terms of peak power generation and saving costs on account of tubewell irrigation.
The dam, located in Gurdaspur district and an inter-state project, was approved by the central government as a ‘national project’ in February 2008 at an estimated cost of ₹2285 crore, including the irrigation component of ₹654 crore.
Though work on the project started in 2013, it was stopped in 2014 due to objections raised by the J&K government. In the meantime, the cost estimate was revised to ₹2,794 crore with Punjab requesting the Centre to include the project in the prioritised list of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY)/Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Projects (AIBP) projects.
Punjab Power minister Gurpreet Kangar said the project will not only help in irrigation purposes, but it will also help the power sector also.
PSPCL chairman-cum managing director Baldev Singh Sran said, “In addition to checking the Ravi waters going waste to Pakistan, the project will help the corporation generate 831 million electricity units and save ₹59 crore annually by generating electricity during summer when there is peak demand in Punjab.”
The project will provide balancing reservoir to enable the upstream Ranjit Sagar dam power station to act as a peaking station, besides having its own generation capacity of 206 megawatt (MW) and irrigation benefit of 37,173-hectare cultivable command area to Punjab and J&K.
It will enable the country to fully utilise the Ravi water as per the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan.
Though the installed capacity of the Ranjit Sagar dam is 600 MW (4X150 MW), but only 300 MW is generated as the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) project cannot handle more flow and the water goes waste to Pakistan if more than 300 MW capacity is run.
Once the Shahpur Kandi project gets completed, a gross storage capacity of 12,071 hectare metre will be provided and it will be possible to run all the four machines of Ranjit Sagar unit at 600 MW for about 8 hours without letting any water downstream of the former.