With the agreement between Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) and Tata Project Limited (TPL), which won the bid called by NEA, the process of electrification of province 2 begin

TPL has been awarded a contract worth Rs. 4 billion for the implementation of Province 2 Rural Electrification Project.

According to a press release issued by NEA, the project aims to improve the power transmission and distribution system in all eight districts of Province 2: Saptari, Siraha, Dhanusha, Mahottari, Sarlahi, Rautahat, Bara and Parsa.

The project, which is to be implemented through NEA's Project Management Directorate, is divided into five lots.

Under the project, eight substations of 33/11 kV, 16.6 MVA capacity with modern equipment will be constructed to make the power supply in the province reliable and of high quality. Similarly, two substations of 33/ 11 kV, 8 MVA capacity will be constructed.

In addition, 323 circuit kilometers 33 kV transmission line, 950 circuit kilometers 11 kV line and 1,000 circuit kilometers of 400 Volt line will be constructed in those districts, NEA said.

The Norwegian government, through Asian Development Bank (ADB) has provided a grant of USD 35 million for the implementation of the project.

Project Chief Bimal Chaudhary (Lot 1), Roshan Khadka (Lot 2 and 4), Randhir Pathak (Lot 3) and Amit Bhagat (Lot 5), Chief Accountant Bishnu Prasad Acharya, Engineers -- Basant Nepal and Bisham Binod Khanal -- and General Managers from TPL -- Shyam Narayan Mittal and Manoj Kumar Patnaik -- signed the agreement on behalf of their respective institutions on Wednesday.

The project is targeted to be completed within 30 months. Once the project is implemented, the overall power transmission and distribution system of Province 2 will be improved, said Bodhraj Dhakal, coordinator of the project.