Water resources minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh a.k.a Lalan Singh on Tuesday threatened to lodge an FIR against NTPC if the Navratna PSU was found responsible for the breach of Bateshwarsthan Ganga canal at Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur a week ago.
However, principal secretary, water resources, Arun Kumar Singh accepted that lapse happened at their (departmental) level too.
Principal secretary Singh said: 'There have been lapses from our side too. We should have seen that water seepage was happening at the place where the underpass was built.'
A team of three engineers from the road construction, rural works and minor irrigation departments has probed the breach and submitted its report to the department.
'We will review the probe report and will take action on its basis. If needed we will lodge an FIR against NTPC,' Lalan said.
The minister asserted that during an inspection of the place where the breach happened, NTPC engineers accepted that some mistakes happened on their part.
'NTPC had constructed an underpass beneath the canal - at the place where breach happened. It had submitted a plan for it and had taken the permission to construct it. However, it did not adhere to it, nor did they follow the required guidelines. It was the reason that they did not take a 'no objection certificate' from us after completing the underpass,' Lalan added.
An engineering team of NTPC from New Delhi is expected to inspect the canal breach site tomorrow.
However, a senior NTPC official told The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity that the state government was carrying out a blame game. 'It is trying to overlook the present mistakes and inaction over seepage for an underpass that was completed 28 years ago,' he said.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar was to inaugurate the Bateshwarsthan Ganga Pump Nahar Pariyojana, a project nearly 40 years in the making, but had to cancel his visit due to the mishap that occurred on September 19.
The place of breach was located inside the premises of Kahalgaon NTPC super thermal power station.
The project was approved by the then Planning Commission in January 1977 at a cost of Rs 13.88 crore and construction work started in 1979. The cost was revised to Rs 389 crore in 2008 and further scaled up to Rs 830 crore.
