Chandwa (Latehar), July 20: Until two years ago, the few customers at Prabhakar Mishra’s two-wheeler showroom in Chandwa would settle for the cheapest bikes, preferring to buy those priced below Rs 40,000.

Now, residents from the village panchayat — headquarters of Chandwa block in Naxalite-hit Latehar district — are shelling out cash for models worth over twice the rate and up to Rs 1.07 lakh.

“Call it misuse of money or their (villagers’) secret lust for the good life. But nowadays, they have much to spend after selling land to Essar and Abhijeet Group,” said Mishra, also a part-time scribe.

The fortunes of some of its residents have swung, thanks to the upcoming Tori power project of Essar Power (Jharkhand) Limited, which may well transform Chandwa into one of the most important addresses in Jharkhand insofar as the future of electricity output is concerned.

According to an MoU signed with the state government, Essar Power will give 25 per cent of the proposed 1,800MW electricity generated from its plant in Chandwa to Jharkhand.

“It has been a difficult and challenging journey for us since we began work on the project in 2008. Construction work involving Chinese experts is now on in full swing and a chimney is all set to start functioning, to help us begin production, by the end of 2013,” said S. Saha, general manager of Essar Power (Jharkhand) Limited.

The company is setting up a 275-metre-long chimney, 192m of which is complete.

Essar has acquired over 650 acres in the revenue villages of Angarha, where the main power plant is coming up, Chakla (the site for coal mining), Ardhe, Mahuamilan and Chatro, which have been refuge of the CPI(Maoist) and its splinter outfits for years.

A panchayat with a population of 20,000 odd people, Chandwa is situated 80km from the state capital and conveniently close to Tori railway station on the Ranchi-Delhi route via Daltonganj.

At the project site in Chandwa village, around 200 local residents who had parted with their land have been engaged by contractors of Essar Projects (India) Limited, an Essar group company that is working as an engineering, procurement and commissioning agency for the power project.

Lallan Singh, general manager (projects) of the group company, said work on setting up two boiler units was progressing smoothly, while two units of electrostatic precipitator — is a device to keep pollution parameters within permissible limits — were also being installed.

K. Ramachandran, the project director, recalled that when the company began construction work in July 2010, it was hampered for nearly 100 days initially due to frequent bandhs called by the rebel groups.

“The local villagers earlier used to think that we were their enemy. But now, they have turned out to be our friends,” he told The Telegraph.

In first phase, Essar Power (Jharkhand) Limited will be commissioning two units of 600MW each. The power (1,200MW) generated from the units in the phase will be used in Jharkhand, Bihar and Noida.

Electricity will be supplied through neighbouring stations being set up by the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited.

Essar Power has been allotted two coal blocks — a 70MT deposit in Chakla and another (102MT) at Ashok Kerketta block.

The supply of one-fourth (450MW) of the output to Jharkhand promises to come as a relief for a power-deficit state that is accustomed to frequent blackouts.

Essar Power (Jharkhand) Limited had signed power purchase agreements with the Bihar government (750MW) and in Noida (300MW), pledging to start supplying electricity by April 2014, Ramachandran said, adding they were thus executing the project on a war-footing.

“The confidence levels of our employees have also gone up. Two women — one from Mumbai and another from Ranchi — are part of our administrative and corporate social responsibility team now,” he said, adding both were gladly based in Chandwa though it fell on a rebel zone.