The Madras High Court Bench here has upheld the decision of Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) to amend its May 9 tender notification and exclude joint ventures from participating in the tender process for construction of buildings housing the reactor, turbine, diesel generator building and other safety-related infrastructure for Units III and IV of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project.
Justice V. Bharathidasan agreed with the NPCIL that the reactor building was supposed to act as a safety barrier to protect people from getting exposed to radioactivity “in case of a very remote chance of an accident”. Hence, it was essential to engage a contractor with single-point responsibility than a joint venture in the interest of the safety of the plant and general public.
The orders were passed while dismissing a writ petition filed against NPCIL by one of the bidders, Shapoorji Pallonji and Company, which claimed to have constructed Vidhan Soudha in Karnataka, Hotel Taj Mahal in Mumbai, Palace of the King of Oman, Ghana's Parliament building and international cricket stadiums at Guyana and Mumbai apart from various ports, railways, roads and bridges across the globe.
The petitioner company, involved in the field of infrastructure development, had challenged a corrigendum issued by NPCIL on June 2 barring the participation of Joint Venture Association (JVA) of private companies in the tender process. The company also sought a direction to the corporation to accept a bid submitted by a joint venture with its subsidiary AFCONS Infrastructure Limited by considering the latter’s technical expertise.
Claiming to be holding 97.34 per cent of the shares, both directly and indirectly, in AFCONS Infrastructure, the petitioner company stated that it was unfair on the part of NPCIL to have amended the May 9 tender notification which, before the June 2 corrigendum, permitted JVAs to participate in the tender process for the project, estimated to be completed at a cost of Rs. 1,904.60 crore.
However, the NPCIL claimed that the May 9 notification had inadvertently stated that joint ventures were also eligible to apply for the project by simply reproducing the format used by NPCIL for other e-tenders. Subsequently, a high-level committee of the corporation met on May 26 and decided to issue the corrigendum considering the critical nature of the work involved and to ensure the safety of the nuclear power plant.
NPCIL counsel Krishna Srinivasan pointed out there was ample time, even after the issuance of the corrigendum, for AFCONS Infrastructure to submit an individual tender, but the company did not do so. Instead, its holding company which had filed the writ petition, continued to persuade NPCIL to accept the tender submitted by the JVA till the last moment and approached the court when its requests were turned down. Accepting his submissions, the judge said: “It is not made clear why the subsidiary company did not participate in the tender process and why the petitioner company is insisting on considering the experience of the subsidiary company as that of the holding company.
Petition dismissed
“By making such a request, the petitioner company only wants to utilise the subsidiary company in executing the work, which the respondent [NPCIL] wants to avoid for the reasons stated above. What cannot be achieved directly, cannot be achieved indirectly... Hence, the writ petition is liable to be dismissed,” the Judge ordered.
HC says for safety
it is essential to
engage a contractor
with single-point responsibility
