Did NTPC flout its own norms in Rae Bareli?

A month after the tragic blast in the boiler of the sixth unit of NTPC’s Unchahar Power project in Rae Bareli took 43 lives, more details are emerging to suggest that unrealistic targets and haste to make the unit operational led to the accident.

According to NTPC’s own records made available to the National Herald, the power utility had been taking 4-5 months to run 500 MW units at full load after lighting up the boiler. But in the case of the ill-fated sixth unit at Unchahar, the plant was run at full load within two months. The time between lighting up the boiler and full load is utilised for testing all safety parameters. But in its hurry to get the unit ready for inauguration, said to be following pressure from the PMO, the power utility is said to have ignored safety requirements.

The NTPC CMD, however, was in a hurry to achieve 50,000 MW installed capacity before the end of March, 2017. Therefore while the boiler of the sixth unit was lighted on January 26, 2017, the unit was run on full load by March 31, i.e. within 64 days.

In contrast, NTPC’s own unit 11 of Vindhyachal had taken 121 days, unit 5 of Rihand 115 days, unit 4 of Simhadri 114 days.

Indeed during the years 2011-2012, units one, two and three of Vallur had a gap of 213, 227 and 181 days between light-up and full load. Indeed the gap was even longer in earlier years, extending to 19 to 23 months in the nineties. While the internal inquiry committee set up by NTPC is yet to submit its report at the time of filing this report, employees are confident that it would give Gurdeep Singh, the NTPC chairman, who was selected by the PMO after bypassing the Public Enterprises Selection Board and who was chairman of Gujarat State Electricity Corporation, a clean chit.

The employees blame the CMD for putting undue pressure on the Project in-charge and holding out the carrot of promoting him as Executive Director if he succeeded in attaining the unrealistic and unsafe targets. The employees also blame the CMD for the faulty transfer and postings which led to far less experienced people getting deployed to sensitive stations. The lack of experience of most people holding the shift at the time of the blast , they believe, was also responsible for the tragedy.