The recent adoption of rehabilitation and resettlement policy by the NLC India Limited (NLCIL), formerly Neyveli Lignite Corporation, adds one more feather to the cap of the 65-year-old Navratna public sector enterprise. Union Minister for Coal and Mines Prahlad Joshi, while lauding the Tamil Nadu government and the power utility at the time of the launch of the document in mid-January, termed the policy “very flexible” with multiple options available to the affected people. But what may be of more interest than the document is the fact that the headquarters of the institution, Neyveli — once regarded as a nondescript agrarian place in Cuddalore district — is a home to the first lignite-fired power plant in south Asia.
Even though the plant (Neyveli Thermal Station-I) is no longer in use, it met the electricity needs of Tamil Nadu for 58 years — from 1962 to 2020. More importantly, Thermal Station-I was meant exclusively for Tamil Nadu where all other stations set up by the NLC in Neyveli since 1985 are being utilised for south India as a whole.
The Thermal Station-I came into being, not without struggle on the part of the then political and administrative leadership of the State. As soon as deposits of lignite were confirmed in Neyveli in the late 1940s and the subsequent exploration revealed their extent, policy-makers, in the formative phase of the country after Independence, started toying with the idea of developing a lignite mine there. Not just that. The proposed project had to have another component — electricity generation. This was where the problem started, when the implementation of the project was included at the time of the formulation of the Second Five Year Plan (April 1956-March 1961).
