NEW DELHI, SEPT 1: The Rs 1,400-crore tender for equipment supply for National Thermal Power Corporation's (NTPC) Talcher project has taken another dramatic turn as the Calcutta High Court has restrained the NTPC from placing the order on public sector Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (Bhel). Bhel and Swedish giant ABB were the two companies in the fray for the order which was awarded to Bhel after ABB's offer was rejected.In its interim order on Tuesday, in response to a writ filed by the unions of an ABB subsidiary, the court has granted a temporary stay for a week. The case is scheduled for hearing in the high court on Friday, September 3. Apart from this, the unions of ABB-ABL, subsidiary of the Swedish giant ABB, have also filed a caveat in the Supreme Court to pre-empt any move by either Bhel or NTPC to vacate this stay.NTPC's Talcher tender has been in the eye of a storm almost from the beginning. NTPC first floated tenders for its Rs 8,000-crore 2000-mw Talcher project last December. Three companies bid for it - Bhel, Construction Engineering which is owned by ABB and Foster-Wheeler. Both ABB and Foster Wheeler deviated from the tender stipulations considerably, as NTPC's own evaluation report of April states. Bhel has since been arguing that it should have been awarded the contract at that stage itself. However, the tender was re-bid, with the Power Ministry as well as NTPC arguing that they needed more competition. In the next round in May, however, ABB decided to change its strategy, and said that 93 per cent of the machinery it was supplying would be produced in India by its subsidiary, ABL - in its December bid, the import content was to be a little under 70 per cent.Under the rules for projects where international competitive bidding is done, if equipment is produced locally, it gets a 15-per cent advantage over that produced abroad - so by reducing the import content of its proposal, ABB was ensuring that it didn't get priced out due to the domestic-producer criterion. Bhel, however, argued that ABL was incapable of producing this equipment, and that this change in domestic content was done just to deny Bhel the price-preference advantage.As the controversy thickened, NTPC sought the Additional Solicitor General's view which said that the ABB bid could not be entertained since ABL could not produce the necessary equipment locally - ``ABB-CE has proposed ABB-ABL as their assignee which is non-viable under bid evaluation'', the opinion said.This done, NTPC then awarded the bid to Bhel after its board meeting on August 7, but asked it to match ABB's offer of Rs 1,303 crore. While Bhel refused to do so, arguing that ABB's bid had been found to be `non-responsive' anyway, ABB decided to fight this further last week. It sought legal opinions from luminaries such as former Chief Justice A M Ahmadi, stating that its disqualification was wrong.ABB employees also petitioned the Chief Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal on the matter, arguing that NTPC was indulging in post-tender negotiations with Bhel, and this showed a bias in Bhel's favour.
