Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh’s loss will be Madhya Pradesh’s gain. After much haggling and high level deliberations, the much-hyped 4,000-mw power project in the state, that was to be set up by state-run National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) at Bargad, in Chitrakoot district of UP, has been cancelled, over excessive claim for power supply made by the state government.

The Centre is now scouting for a new site in Madhya Pradesh, where the plant is likely to come up.

However, when contacted by FE, NTPC chairman RS Sharma denied that the project was off.

"We are holding discussions with the UP government and the project is still on,” Sharma told FE.

But speaking to FE, an official of the power ministry said, talks between the state government and NTPC have fallen through. He said the Centre is now scouting for a new site in the Madhya Pradesh side of Bundelkhand .

Stating that the reason for canceling the project at Bargad was the adamant stance of the state government, the official said, "We had offered 75% share of the power to Uttar Pradesh, and had even sent a copy of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) to them. But even after sitting on it for a long time, it was unyielding in its demand of 100% power allocation from the project. That was making things difficult for us.”

An official of the UP government too stated the Bargad project will now be set up by private players through the MoU route. "We will not give the project to NTPC now,” he stated.

While the Uttar Pradesh government has been demanding total power allocation on the ground that UP is a highly populated and severely power-crunched state, the Centre on its part, has bent national policy parameters for the politically-sensitive Bundelkhand plant by offering 75% of the power.

"Offering anything beyond this is not possible. While the UP government has been giving instances where NTPC has given 100% power to the state, they cannot be a yardstick anymore. They happened a long time back when NTPC was not a listed company. Things are different now,” said the official.

Interestingly, one of the reasons why the project slipped out of UP’s hands and landed into MP’s territory is that UP had stretched things too far in the hope that the ‘Rahul Gandhi factor’ will come to its aid. "With Rahul Gandhi lobbying hard for Bundelkhand and even getting the Prime Minister...