AGARTALA, March 24 (TIWN): When Tripura is hit with massive power crisis, the Tripura government with all its effort on Wednesday marked the supply of the 100MW power to Bangladesh with the formal inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bangladeshi Premier Sheikh Hasina through video conferencing. The engineers and workers of the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited have worked round the clock to set up the 47 km transmission line from Western Tripura to southern Comilla in Bangladesh. India ensures supply of additional 100 MW electricity to Bangladesh from Wednesday. Eighteen km of this line and 67 of the 143 transmission towers fall in the Indian Territory. The 100 MW is in addition to 500 MW that Bangladesh is presently receiving from West Bengal. The Tripura Government has decided to export 100 MW to Bangladesh from its share of 196 MW power from the Palatana power plant in reciprocation of Dhaka allowing Tripura to use its ports to transport the heavy equipment for the 726 MW Palatana project. The project was taken one year back. Now, the work is completed and the line is switched over on Wednesday, 2016. Narendra Modi discussed the power supply from Tripura with his counterpart Sheikh Hasina during his Dhaka visit in June this year.

Tripura's location and socio-economic linkages with Bangladesh makes the state a potential hub for trade with and through Bangladesh from the entire north-eastern region of India.

It is to be mentioned here that, India has inked an agreement to supply 100 MW of electricity to Bangladesh from the gas-based palatana power plant from Tripura at ₹5.50 a unit more or less identical to the weighted average generation tariff of 6.50 in Bangladesh. India currently supplies 500 MW to Dhaka through the West Bengal border.

The bond of India and Bangladesh have developed in last few years and has signed several agreement which are beneficial for both the countries including the recently signed agreement India and Bangladesh over purchase of surplus bandwidth and the extension of the submarine internet cable from its Bangladesh cox’s bazaar coastal town to Tripura’s capital Agartala has opened new opportunities for the state.

On the one hand Tripura government has kicked off 100MW power supply to Bangladesh but a bitter truth is that TSECL is about to pay crores of money to the power plants in Tripura and no major initiative is taken to clear the bills. It is seen that Tripura is under huge debt of total 100 crores, which is yet to be paid to the power plants based in Tripura.

Although Tripura Govt. gave lands to Palatana Plant, but due to this debt of crores, TSECL is dumped with various problems. Now question arises, when Tripura is under such huge debts, then how Manik government will continue with the power supply to Bangladesh.