11 attend pre-bid meeting of Tangedco

Tangedco had floated fresh bids for the much delayed 2X660 MW Udangudi project after scrapping the previous tender in March this year citing defects in the bids of both BHEL and CSEPDI-TRISHE, a Indo-Chinese consortium. However, the consortium moved the Madras High Court against cancellation of bids. On Tuesday, the High Court directed Tangedco not to open the bids till further orders.

A senior Tangedco official said they did not expect such keen participation of 11 bidders, including six EPC contractors and five equipment manufacturers in the pre bid meeting. The 11 bidders including BHEL, BGR, Thermax and Kirloskar participated in the meeting. “The meeting went on smooth. The bidders’ queries will be answered and uploaded in the website,” the official said.

The official said some bidders had sought extension of time to submit their techno and commercial bids varying from 15 days to three weeks. “We had planned to open the bids only on July 2. Due to the request from bidders, we are likely to give two weeks,” the official said, expressing confidence that the contract for the project would be issued at a very competitive price due to very keen competition from the bidders.

The Udangudi project has evoked good response despite the Tangedco’s decision to strictly follow the Central Electricity Authority’s direction to incorporate the condition of setting up of phased indigenous manufacturing facilities in the bids floated for the project. When bids for the Udangudi project were floated in April 2013, only four companies participated.

Under the Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP), the bidder should procure supercritical boiler or turbine manufactured in the country and such manufacturing facilities should be owned by the bidder or should have a registered subsidiary or joint venture manufacturing facility. “Only those companies which fulfil these conditions will qualify for the tendering process. It will also avoid needless controversies,” the official said.

Reserving orders on the petitions, Justice M. Sathyanarayanan said, “Bids floated for new tenders shall not be opened by respondents (Tangedco) till the passing of orders in the miscellaneous petitions.”

The judge also permitted BHEL, which was also a bidder for the project, to be impleaded as a party to the proceedings. In 2013, Tangedco had floated a tender for the power project. The petitioner outbid BHEL by nearly Rs 137 crore and was the lowest bidder. However, Tangedco and other authorities decided to scrap the entire tender process citing technical deficiencies. Challenging this order and alleging malafides, the petitioner filed a petition and the matter was still pending. While so, Tangedco floated the new tender for the project, in which BHEL among others were the participants.

According to CSEPDI-TRISHE consortium, on April 7, 2015 when its petition was taken up for hearing, an officer of Tangedco appeared before the court and stated that no steps were taken to float a new tender. This court had also recorded his statement. Tangedco served its counter on its counsel on April 16. While the case was pending before the court, Tangedco had on April 21 surreptitiously advertised in a newspaper a new tender in respect of the very same project, wholly with a view to render its petition infructuous.

A newspaper had reported that significant alterations have been made to the tender conditions. Instead of debt financing arrangement the new tender had proposed a more traditional contractor for hire model. The Tangedco will seek a loan from Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) and in turn release funds in phases based on a pre-determined construction scheme, the petitioner said.