PMO wants to know exact date of Rampal power plant operation

The Prime Minister office (PMO) asked the Power Division on Sunday to let it know the exact commercial operation date (COD) of 1,320 MW Bangladesh India Friendship Power Company (Pvt) Ltd (BIFPCL) to dispel confusion in this regard.
The US$2 billion dollar BIFPCL projects, popularly known as Rampal Power Project, funded by the Indian LoC has deferred its commissioning date three times, it has been also said that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will jointly inaugurate the plant during her visit to New Delhi (September 2022), so the PMO wants to know the exact position of the COD.
All these questions were raised at an unscheduled meeting at the PMO on Sunday morning, to know the progress of the Power and Energy Division's ongoing steps to mitigate the nagging energy and power crisis, the PMO has conducted an unscheduled meeting on Sunday morning, it discussed many issues related with the increase of gas and electricity output by next two months, sources said.
"Confusion has arisen over the COD of different big base load plants, BIFPCL, Matarbari, Rooppur are in that line, however, BIFPCL has already shifted their stands at different times which created confusion in the mind of the public as well as in the business communities' work plan, so we need to be more specific," a senior official of the Power Division told the daily Observer on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has directed the Power Division and the Ministry of Science and Technology to coordinate with each other in proper manner to bring the Rooppur Nuclear power into the nation grid as per schedule.
The 230 KV back-feed power line is yet to be commissioned, we hope that it will be completed by this month, BIFPCL authority said.
Meeting told that a transmission line needed for evacuating electricity from Rampal Power Plant is not ready yet the Power Grid Company plans to transfer Rampal Power Plant's electricity to Khulna. A year will be needed to bring the electricity generated at Payra and Rampal to Dhaka.
"We already established the 24km Mongla-Khulna 230kv transmission line to evacuate electricity from the first unit of Rampal power plant. And for the second unit, our Gopalganj-Mawa transmission line will be prepared by the end of December 2022," PGCB official said.
 It also asked the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources to complete the task of three base-load power plants works as per schedule thus people could be get respite from the ongoing power crisis.
It also asked the Energy Division to expedite the work of bringing the "standard gas" from different gas fields to end the gas crisis.
"All this directives came at a meeting at the Prime Minister Office (PMO) on Sunday, Prime Minister's Energy Adviser Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury presided over the meeting, State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid, Principle Secretary to the Prime Minister Dr Ahmed Kaikaus, Power Cell DG Mohammad Hossain, Petrobangla Chairman and Power Development Board (PDB) Chairman were also present. They told the meeting that Rampal will be commissioned by  December 31 as the river crossing work of PGCB will be completed by then and electricity from Adani's project will come by March 31 in 2023.