Fraud in construction of cooling tower at DVC Raghunathpur
Vinod Kumar Gupta
Friday, 14 October 2011
KOLKATTA : A fraud has been committed in the construction of cooling tower of unit 1of 2x 600 MW Raghunathpur Thermal project of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), All India power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has alleged in a white paper issued yesterday.

AIPEF has represented to Ministry of Power that it is now full one year since construction work on cooling tower no-1 was halted on October 13 last year. The AIPEF has stressed that the deployment of lesser quantity of steel was not an unintended or inadvertent error but an action of calculated and deliberate fraud for which the case should be handed over to the CBI as well as Technical Examiner wing of Central Vigilance Commission.

The construction of cooling tower involves the providing of steel reinforcement and Concreting in stages known as ''Lifts''. One cooling tower would have more than 70 Lifts. In the case of NDCT of unit -1, it was found that the construction agency had used lesser quantity of reinforcement steel between 32-35 lifts.
The DVC constituted an expert committee on February 28 this year to examine the discrepancy. The committee established a shortfall of steel to the extent of 56% in the shell of tower, while the spacing of vertical reinforcement bars was found increased to the extent of 309%. In the case of horizontal steel reinforcement the committee found a deficiency to the extent of 23%. In addition to discrepancies in steel between 32 to 35 lifts, further discrepancies between 29-32 lifts of the cooling tower shell.

A high level meeting Chaired by Chairman DVC was held on July 30 and as per minutes of meeting ‘‘it is agreed that NDCT of unit 1 is not acceptable at its present state of construction due to lesser reinforcement provided in RCC shell with respect to approved drawings at certain elevation of the shell''
It is recorded in the minutes that the cooling tower of unit 2 would be utilized to run unit -1 with target date of March 2012. The cooling tower of unit-1 would later be used to run unit-2.

However since the cooling tower of unit -1 has been declared defective and unsafe by the DVC Committee, the implication is that unit-2 of 600 MW would suffer a delay of minimum 2 years on account of the cooling tower alone. AIPEF has demanded that on basis of DVC committee report the entire structure should be demolished and EPC contactor Reliance Energy be asked to re-construct afresh with full (design) quantity of steel.