Beas tragedy: Another probe panel formed

Two days after divisional commissioner Mandi, Onkar Sharma, submitted his report on the Beas river tragedy, which claimed the lives of 24 engineering students, the Himachal Pradesh government on Saturday constituted another inquiry to ascertain the orders of State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC) to Larji project officials to stop generation at its 126 megawatt Larji hydel project, forcing the dam officials to release water from the barrage.

Two days after divisional commissioner Mandi, Onkar Sharma, submitted his report on the Beas river tragedy, which claimed the lives of 24 engineering students, the Himachal Pradesh government on Saturday constituted another inquiry to ascertain the orders of State Load Dispatch Centre (SLDC) to Larji project officials to stop generation at its 126 megawatt Larji hydel project, forcing the dam officials to release water from the barrage.

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“Chief engineer-level officer will head the inquiry to ascertain SLDC’s role,” said chief secretary P Mitra told Hindustan Times.

Divisional commissioner Mandi report detected that the SLDC in the evening of June 8 had asked the Larji hydro project and Bhabha hydroelectric power projects to shed load.

Due to repeated instructions to reduce load from 138 MW to 96 MW to 64 MW and finally to 32 MW, water accumulated inthe reservoir behind Larji barrage and had to be released to maintain the desired safe reservoir level. Sharma had observed that the SLDC should have looked into the issue of prorata basis load shedding across the state, whether the projects were state owned or that of IPP.