KSK Mahanadi Power Project

This coal-fired power plant is located at Nariyara village in Akaltara tehsil of Janjgir-Champa district in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. The approved capacity of the plant is 3600 MW (6×600 MW). The Engineering, procurement and construction contract was awarded to SEPCO of the People's Republic of China.[1]

The company had arranged long-term coal supply arrangements with the Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation and the Goa Industrial Development Corporation from the Morga-II and Gare Pelma-II coal blocks respectively. It has also been allocated tapering linkage arrangements with Coal India. [2] However, the supreme court judgment of 2014 on the Coal scam case led to cancellation of all allocations.

Project is of six units, each unit being 600 MW. Three of the six units have been commissioned so far.

The company is facing major issues, and financial institutions have begun the process of finding a suitable buyer for the project. Apart from seeking investors for the project, lenders also plan to change the management of a subsidiary which is implementing the raw water intake system for the project, and that of an associate developing the railway siding outside the plant boundary.

The company reported revenues of only Rs. 200 million (USD three million) in FY-2017, which is negligible if indeed 1200 MW of production capacity was operational during that year. The single reason for non-operation is the non-availability of coal. In 2014, the supreme court had cancelled wholesale all coal allocations made since 1993 by the government of India, which has held a monopoly on coal mining since nationalization in the 1950s. Thus, all private companies were tarred with the same brush.