Kathmandu, January 31
The government has handed over the Lower Arun Hydropower Project construction contract to the Indian Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVL).
A meeting of the Investment Board Nepal, the government authority formed to handle large-scale development projects, held on Friday made the decision, the board informs in a statement. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli chairs the board.
The SJVL is a joint venture of the federal government of India and Himachal provincial government.
The board’s spokesperson Dharmendra Kumar Mishra says the company would be contracted to build the 679-megawatt project in the build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) model.
Indian officials were making efforts to bag this project for a long. As India is constructing the Arun III Hydropower Project also, it was lobbying for the contract to build another project there. It had communicated with the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Energy, and the Investment Board in this regard.
India has been arguing that assigning the same company for two projects would be easy in terms of cost, construction material supply, and other technical preparations.
