Ten years after Gujarat State Electricity Corporation (GSECL) shelved a 1,600 MW coal-fired plant in Shinor taluka of Vadodara district, the state has restarted land acquisition for it. Gujarat Samachar reported on November 8 that the government has published notices under Section 11 of the 2013 land acquisition law for land in Surashamal, Mindhol and Manjrol, three villages on the Narmada’s bank. Each village accounts for more than 170 hectares of the land listed, according to the paper.
The plan, as reported, is two 800 MW units, Vadodara district’s first thermal power station. GSECL would draw water from the Narmada and fuel from a mine at Jhagadia across the river in Bharuch district; the paper says that access is why the site was picked.
Why GSECL gave up on Shinor once already
The project is not new. GSECL began work on a 2 x 800 MW supercritical plant at Shinor in 2010, at an estimated cost of Rs 9,000 crore. BHEL surveyed land and took water samples around Jamapura, Shinor, Lilod, Kukas, Kanjeta and Shimli for the project report. In June 2016 DeshGujarat reported that the utility had dropped it because roughly 1,000 bigha could not be bought from farmers who did not want to sell, and had moved its attention to an 800 MW unit at Dhuvaran.
The villages named in the new notices differ from that 2016 list, which suggests the alignment has shifted to a different parcel on the same bank. Gujarat Samachar adds that preparations restarted in 2018 and then stalled, that the three villages were earlier exempted from a Social Impact Assessment, and that a Section 10(A) notice preceded the current one. The government had once promised to finish acquisition within two years; the paper says the process now runs on a ten-year horizon.
The record demand behind the revival
The timing tracks Gujarat’s power squeeze. The state hit an all-time peak of 29,822 MW on October 16, 36.6% above the same period last year, and has been buying short-term power month by month to cover the gap, as we reported in October. In its official review that week, the government listed new thermal projects at Sinor, Wanakbori and Gandhinagar as being at the land acquisition and in-principle approval stage, DeshGujarat reported. Gujarat Samachar’s English edition carried the same status and noted that none of these three projects has a capacity or commissioning date attached yet.
For comparison, the 800 MW Ukai unit that GSECL is already building is due in September 2029, and the 4,200 MW nuclear project agreed with NPCIL expects its first unit in 2032. A plant still at the land stage in late 2026 would add power well after both.
What the Section 11 notice means for Shinor landowners
A Section 11 notice under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 is the preliminary step. It names the survey numbers the state intends to acquire and opens the window for objections: the central Act gives anyone with an interest in the land 60 days from publication to file them with the collector, who must hear them before a final declaration. Owners who received notices can ask the Shinor mamlatdar or the Vadodara collectorate for the full survey-number list.
Because the villages were exempted from a Social Impact Assessment, there will be no separate public study of how many families farm or work the land. That puts more weight on the objection hearings, which in 2016 were where the earlier attempt ran aground.
Sources: Gujarat Samachar, DeshGujarat (October 2026), DeshGujarat (June 2016), Gujarat Samachar English
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.