It may be just a coincidence, but one wish of former
Chief Minister K. Kamaraj became a reality on his 110th birth anniversary (July
15, 2013) – the Central authorities agreeing to Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s
proposal of buying five per cent stake in the Neyveli Lignite Corporation
(NLC). In May 1957, at a function to mark the inauguration of the Neyveli
project, Kamaraj interjected while Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was
addressing the function, according to Congress leader A. Gopanna in his
well-researched work in Tamil titled “Kamaraj – An Era” five years ago.
Kamaraj wanted to know
whether the Centre would give a share in profits to the State government. Nehru
replied that this issue would be taken up when the occasion arose. By then, the
Union government had decided to implement the project as its own. This was why
the query came from Kamaraj, whose record of remaining in office as Tamil Nadu
Chief Minister for an unbroken spell of nine years (1954-1963) remains intact.
From the beginning, the Neyveli
project, which owes its origins to a group of great men of integrity and
commitment to the public well-being, including Kamaraj, was conceived as an
integrated scheme of lignite mining and electricity generation. But, in the
years immediately after Independence,
power production was regarded in certain quarters as one of the functions of
the States despite the subject ‘Electricity’ figuring in Concurrent List of the
Constitution.
Prime Minister Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru taking a "watch-tower view" of the earth-moving operations at the integrated lignite project which he inaugurated on May 20, 1957 at Neyveli. At right is Mr. Kamaraj, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu
It was against this backdrop
that one had to view the Union Planning Commission’s opposition at that time to
the Tamil Nadu government’s proposal that the Neyveli project be implemented as
a Central scheme. While the Commission took the stand that the project was, in
effect, meant for electricity production and the State government was free to
execute it, the State’s position was that the project involved mining of a
major mineral, which fell within the domain of the Centre.
The second-in-command of
Kamaraj’s Cabinet, C. Subramaniam, had even walked out of a meeting with the Planning
Commission authorities, as narrated in Subramaniam’s memoirs, “Hand of Destiny”
– Volume I (page 310).
It was left to Kamaraj to
prevail upon Nehru to agree to his government’s proposal. This was acknowledged
by Nehru himself in the inaugural event of the Neyveli project. Over the last
56 years, Neyveli has become an important hub of power generation in the
northern part of the State. Its three power plants can generate 2,490 MW and
lignite mines 28.5 million tonnes per annum.
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