The State government’s ambitious 2x600 MW Udangudi Super Critical Thermal Power Project will be delayed as the Madras High Court on Wednesday granted an interim stay on the tender proceedings.
Passing interim orders, Justice M. Sathyanarayanan granted an interim injunction restraining officials of Tangedco from proceeding with the tender notification dated March 26 .
In his order on the petition by Central Southern China Electric Power Design Institute -Trishe Consortium, the judge said the court was of the view that the new tender had adopted the Engineering, Procurement and Construction basis and that the Tangedco, in all probability, was going to adopt ‘Make in India’ policy which might favour BHEL, the fourth respondent in the case.
It should be taken note of the fact that the Tangedco Board in its meeting held on March 13, 2015 had opined that the Government of India as well as Central Electricity Authority (CEA) were giving thrust and had issued guidelines for sourcing super critical units from indigenous manufacturers and took a decision to follow the same, the judge pointed out.
Besides, it appeared that the Tangedco Board primarily went on the opinion of the consultant who had not recommended outright rejection of both bids and in fact, pointed out among other things that the bid with the lowest evaluated price was the petitioner as against BHEL.
Even assuming that both the bids were acceptable, the consultant had asked Tangedco to take up certain points with the successful bidder before firming up an offer, the judge said pointing out that the bid evaluation report of the consultant clearly indicated that the debt financing of the petitioner and BHEL was in line with the specification requirements.
The Tangedco / Board went primarily on the opinion of the consultant and hence it should have resorted to alternate step suggested by it so that the time to be taken for floating new tender and finalising it could have been avoided, Justice Sathyanarayanan said.
Noting that the floating of fresh tender might result in cost overrun detrimental to the public interest, he said the Tangedco, being instrumentality of the State, runs its affairs on public money. Hence, it should have taken every endeavour to see to that wastage of time with a consequence of cost overrun / increase in expenditure should be avoided. But in this case, it failed to do so, he observed.
In the light of the facts and circumstances and the above reasons, the judge said the court was of the considered view that a prima facie case has been made out and granted the interim stay till the disposal of the writ petition.
