Central government mulling over overhead electricity link with Sri Lanka

The central government is mulling the construction of an overhead electricity link with Sri Lanka as part of India’s strategy to increase cross-border power trade in South Asia. The overhead line is being considered after the earlier proposal to set up an undersea power transmission link between the two countries turned out to be infeasible owing to the high capital cost. The earlier plan involved Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (Powergrid) setting up a link from Madurai in Tamil Nadu to Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka’s north-central province for transmitting 1,000 MW of power. About 30 km of the transmission link was proposed to be under the sea.