Ranchi: Plans to supply cooking gas directly at homes in Ranchi, courtesy the 1,5000km Urja Ganga Gas pipeline project between UP and Odisha, via Jharkhand and Bihar, seems to have hit a road block because of unavailability of land.
An official of GAIL, the PSU assigned to work on the project, said laying of pipelines was underway in various parts of the state - Bokaro and East Singhbhum. But work in Ranchi had not begun as the PSU could not get land to set up CNG stations (for vehicles) and centralised supply stations from where cooking gas, in this cases, PNG (piped natural gas) would be supplied to homes.
"Recently, we held a meeting with the district administration specifying areas where we need land. But there seems to be a problem in terms of readily available government land," said the official.
Additional collector of Ranchi Anjani Kumar Mishra admitted there was a problem, adding that they had asked GAIL to rework plans.
"GAIL is looking for 50m x 50m (2,500 sqm) land at places like Itki, Booty More, Main Road and Namkum. But government land of such dimension is not available within city limits. We are looking at privately-owned land, but that too is looking difficult," Mishra told The Telegraph.
According to the 2011 census, Ranchi has 5,69,444 households. GAIL's target is to provide 29,962 gas connections in five years.
"In Ranchi, we will lay pipelines and provide connections simultaneously. In the first year, we intend to provide connections to 1,390 households, 6,309 in the second year, 14,981 in the third year, 20,973 in the fourth year and the remaining in the fifth year," said the GAIL official, adding that in all, they would need over 5,000 sq km of land to lay the pipelines, build, operate and expand the city gas distribution system.
The Urja Ganga Gas pipeline project, estimated to cost Rs 51,000 crore, was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016. It is meant to be completed by 2019. In the first phase, 1,500km of gas pipeline is to be laid, and 2,540km in the second phase. Around 500km of the pipeline will pass through Jharkhand from Bokaro to Ranchi to East Singhbhum from where it would be linked to Rourkela in Odisha.
