AGARTALA, December 17 (TIWN): Tripura, ruined by insurgency for more than three decades, made considerable progress in the commercial sectors and emerged as the only power surplus state in the northeastern region in 2014. However, Tripura is power surplus on paper but daily load shedding continues.

After the inauguration of second unit of the 726 MW gas- based thermal power project, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Palatana in Gomati district on December 1, another power plant at Monarchak in Sipahijala district of Tripura is all set to start generation likely from January 2015.

Recently Power Minister Manik Dey said that with the commissioning of the Palatana project, Tripura is now a power surplus state and has told the central government that it could take 100 mw of power from its allocation and give it to Bangladesh, which allowed the state Tripura to carry over dimensional machines of the project by using their roads and waterways.

"Without their help it would not have been possible to carry the machines through the hilly roads of northeast," he said.

Seven northeastern states are being allocated their share from the project. Assam is slated to get 240 MW of electricity, followed by Tripura with a share of 196 MW from both units. The power sharing agreement between the NEC and project shareholders at Palatana include Meghalaya (79 MW), Manipur (42 MW), Nagaland (27 MW), Mizoram (22 MW) and Arunachal Pradesh (22 MW), 98 MW was allocated for commercial trading to ONGC.

Minister also said that he had a detailed discussion with ONGC officials on the sidelines of the inauguration of the second unit of the Palatana project who assured of supplying natural gas to Monarchak plant by the first week of January.

After all these publicity of State Govt boastng as a power surplus state, still Tripura's children study under candle light or lanterns.