Uttarakhand, in the northern part of India, is one the country’s poorest states. It was created in November 2000 from a split in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At around 2008, its annual per capita electricity consumption was less than half the national average, and economic development was constrained by lack of power supply.
To address the situation, the government of Uttarakhand formulated a roadmap for state energy sector development, which prioritized meeting the infrastructure requirements in generation, transmission, and distribution to achieve “Power for All by 2012.” The Uttarakhand Power Sector Investment Program (UPSIP) evolved from this roadmap, partial financing for which was requested by the Government of India from the Asian Development Bank (ADB). In response, ADB approved in March 2006 a 4-tranche, $300 million multitranche financing facility (MFF) to support the first phase of UPSIP implementation.
Tranche 2 of the MFF, meant to partially finance the construction of the 90-kilometer (km) Loharinagpala–Koteshor transmission line, was approved in December 2008. Together with a substation to be constructed under tranche 3, the transmission line would have evacuated power from the planned Loharinagpala and other run-of-river hydropower plants (HPPs) in the Bhagirathi river basin in Uttarakhand to the northern grid of India. The $62.4 million tranche 2 project was processed at the same time as the tranche 3 project.
However, because of environmental concerns, the government of India cancelled in November 2010 the Loharinagpala HPP project, and subsequently in December 2011, the Loharinagpala–Koteshor transmission line project. In July 2012, the government requested a minor change in the project scope and a 2-year extension of the implementation period to 31 December 2013. ADB approved the minor change in scope, which included 5 shorter transmission lines comprising a total of 67.3 km, 1 substation bay extension, and project implementation support. The project, however, completed only one 14.31-km transmission line package, comprising 21% of the total target. Slow progress in the construction of the other targeted HPP projects prompted the cancellation of 2 other transmission line subprojects, making the substation bay extension subproject irrelevant.
The executing agency (EA), in the face of all the challenges, continued to be committed to implementing Uttarakhand’s power sector master plan by completing the construction of most of the cancelled transmission lines and substations under the UPSIP. However, due to uncertainties in the commissioning of the UPSIP HPP projects and the expiry in March 2016 of the maximum 10-year MFF, the continuation of the project was deemed no longer feasible. The project was thus less than successful in achieving its planned results.
Total actual project cost was $13.10 million, of which 71% was sourced from the ADB loan. An unspent loan amount of $51.63 million was cancelled in March 2015, resulting in the revised loan amount of $10.77 million.
Uttarakhand’s Energy Department (UED) was the EA and the Power Transmission Company of Uttarakhand Limited (PTCUL), the implementing agency.
