Bhagalpur: Bhagalpur zilla parishad, lying defunct because of the Srijan scam, is all set to recover some Rs 11 crore from the NTPC Kahalgaon super thermal power project.

The plant allegedly took the zilla parishad's land illegally and has been utilising it as a fly ash lagoon for over a decade.

Ram Prakesh Singh, principal secretary of the panchayati raj department, had in December instructed Bhagalpur district magistrate (DM) Adesh Titarmare to recover Rs 11 crore from NTPC against utilisation of zilla parishad land, but the district administration has not done anything till now.

Nearly 25.32 acres near NTPC's Kahalgaon project is said to have been illegally captured by the power station in the early eighties and transformed into the lagoon for fly ash, waste material generated from burning coal that helps NTPC generate power. "The matter surfaced during the tenure of Shambhu Dayal Khaitan, then president of Bhagalpur zilla parishad, in 2005-06. He raised the matter at that time but nothing happened," a source in the zilla parishad said.

It again came to light during the recent audit of accounts and assets of the zilla parishad by the state finance department in the wake of the Srijan scam. "An audit of the zilla parishad's funds began last September after huge amounts were illegally withdrawn from the zilla parishad's bank accounts in the Srijan scam," the source said. "By October-November, the audit team sniffed that NTPC had illegally grabbed the zilla parishad land. It evaluated Rs 1 core per year as the charge for utilising the land and handed over its audit report to the Bihar state panchayati raj department."

On the basis of the audit report, Titarmare was asked to claim the amount from NTPC, Kahalgaon.

Titarmare could not be contacted. He, as such, keeps away from journalists since the Srijan scam. Despite several attempts, NTPC Kahalgaon group general manager K. Sreedhar, too, could not be reached on his landline.

An earlier zilla parishad president, Khaitan, had written to NTPC in this regard. When the thermal plant management ignored the zilla parishad's letters, a legal notice was sent to it, sources said. "We don't know why the zilla parishad authorities did not initiate follow-up action when there was no response to the legal notice," a source said.

"NTPC illegally capturing zilla parishad land and not paying anything for utilising the land, amounts to a direct revenue loss for the government," Bhagalpur zilla parishad president Tuntun Sha said. "We are trying to solve the matter but even after instructions from panchayati raj officials to the district administration, nothing has taken place so far."