The State Infrastructure and Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakhand Limited (SIDCUL), possessing 250 acres of land at the industrial town of Kashipur, has said that it is still open for setting up a gas-based power plant there.

Notably, Earlier this month, the Uttarakhand Government directed SIDCUL to part with nearly 50 acres of its 250 acre land bank to another state-run UJVN which is also setting up a power plant at Kashipur.

The land allocation to two power projects, has put some uncertainty clouds over SIDCUL’s proposed plan to set up a knowledge hub at Kashipur where it earlier this year had given 200 acres of land for the purpose of setting up the campus of Indian Institute of Management. But it will be wrong to say that the new gas based project has doomed the proposed knowledge hub at Kashipur; as the SIDCUL had plans for gas-based plant, much before the commitment made for a knowledge hub.

With the natural gas all set to reach the hill state, the government-owned SIDCUL had prepared plans to set up two 300-Mw gas-based plants at Kashipur and Haridwar areas in collaboration with GAIL earlier this year. This was the first diversification move by SIDCUL which had set up several key industrial estates like Pantnagar and Haridwar in the hill state. GAIL is constructing two pipelines to bring them to Kashipur and Haridwar areas in the hill state from Uttar Pradesh in one year. GAIL began construction of these pipelines last year with the construction of Karanpur-Moradabad-Kashipur-Rudrapur pipeline in the first phase with a cost of Rs 250 crore. The pipeline will be 182 km in length. Similarly, the other pipeline is being brought from Saharanpur in north-western Uttar Pradesh to Haridwar district of the state.

The new project is hoped to bring some solace to the power shortage faced by the state. As the power generated by the project will ease of pressure from the power meant for the civilians.
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