Baripada: A multi-purpose hydro-power project across Baitarani in Raruan block of Mayurbhanj district has remained defunct with its machinery rusting away for lack of maintenance and repair.
Locals say the project for which crores of rupees were spent could not last long as its work had been botched up.
When the project work was undertaken in 1995 at Kesharikund in Raruan, a fringe area on Keonjhar borders, locals had a lot of hope of as the project aimed at producing electricity and irrigating farmland.
Then Governor B. Satyanarayan Reddy had inaugurated the project March 23, the same year.
The dammed water was being channelised through a gate enabling a turbine to spin and electricity was produced successfully. The project was run on an experimental basis to provide irrigation to 10 acres of land.
Locals were quite happy with the initial success of the project. However, their euphoria evaporated a few days after the project broke down suddenly.
Over the years, its machinery remained idle and exposed to rain and sun. Gradually the machinery rusted away while concrete structures developed cracks. Some locals have taken away its parts, it was learnt.
According to locals, had the project been made fully operational, it could have provided electricity to 7,000 people in three panchayats, apart from making provision of irrigation facility for 500 acres of farmland in Keonjhar and Mayurbhanj districts.
“Neither the state government nor the Centre took steps for the maintenance of the project,” locals alleged.
They said the government has made the area a tourist place while neglecting its hydro-electricity and irrigation potential.
Bikash Das, a local, observed that if the project is executed, people of this tribal-dominated pocket will get benefits of irrigation and electricity, which have been a distant dream for the people.
He said the state and central governments should take steps for completion and operation of the project in the larger interests of the people. PNN
