Ending seven months of flip-flop over the 4,000 MW Sasan ultra mega power project in Madhya Pradesh, the Union government today awarded the contract to Anil Ambani-backed Reliance Power after the firm lowered its bid price to match original winner Lanco Infratech’s Rs 1.19 per unit.On July 24, the empowered group of ministers (EGOM), after considering all the legal issues, decided to cancel Lanco’s bid as “invalid” from the very beginning.Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters here that the Reliance Power’s “revised bid of Rs 1.1961 was the lowest of the three revised bids”. Jaiprakash and NTPC were the other bidders but they did not cut their price from the original Rs 1.65 and Rs 2.12 per unit. Reliance Power, a unit of Reliance Energy, shaved 10 paise from its earlier bid of Rs 1.29 per unit to bag the project.“We are delighted to have won India’s largest ultra mega power project through an international competitive bidding process,” Anil Ambani said in a statement today. Reliance Energy shares surged 5 per cent to Rs 802 in intra-day trading on Bombay Stock Exchange after reports of winning the project.A rough calculation shows that the reduced Reliance Power bid will save the eight beneficiary states — Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal and Chhattisgarh — about Rs 350-400 crore a year. According to Reliance, the power-cum-coal mining project would need an investment of around Rs 20,000 crore.After the meeting of the EGOM today, Shinde said the procurer (Sasan Power) should “consider taking immediate action to issue the letter of intent to the lowest bidder”. He said that the government would not encash Lanco’s entire Rs 120-crore bid bond guarantee. Earlier, Lanco said in newspaper advertisements that it disagreed with its disqualification from the Sasan project but accepted the ministry’s decision. The government has said that the Hyderabad-based firm would be allowed to bid for future projects.The Sasan project had reached a dead end after it emerged that the lowest bidder — the Globeleq-Lanco combine — had a change in ownership and may even have misrepresented facts in the tender.
