Cuttack, Oct. 29: Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL)’s water intake system in Mahanadi river in Cuttack has not been made operational as construction work has been stalled for nearly three months because of a court order, adversely affecting the tight schedule of the public sector undertaking’s Paradip refinery project. The Rs 29,777 crore refinery project is to be commissioned in March 2012.

An IOCL official said the intake system was to be completed and commissioned by end of September so as to carry out trial runs and be ready to supply water to the refinery project by November end. But the construction of the intake well as well as the other facilities at the allotted land mass within the river Mahanadi was stopped on July 30 following imposition of restrictions on it by Orissa High Court.

“The construction of the intake well as well as the other facilities at the allotted land plot and construction of the intake point was up to 80 per cent complete when work was stopped,” the IOCL official said.

The high court imposed the restrictions on July 29 in an interim order on a PIL seeking judicial intervention against the construction work on the ground that it would pose a threat to the city when the river is in spate. The Nationalist Lawyers’ Forum had filed the PIL.

IOCL’s deputy general manager (HR) Nirod Chandra Das has filed a petition seeking modification of the order issued to stop the construction. The petition was scheduled for hearing on October 19. But the court is yet to take it up for hearing.

The Paradip refinery project involves setting up a refinery-cum-petrochemical complex for processing 15 million metric tonnes of crude oil per annum, an LPG dispatch facility and associated marine facilities.

According to the petition, the project plan envisaged pumping of water from the river Mahanadi through a 93-km pipeline from Cuttack to Paradip.