Last date for Tilaiya bid submission extended

The last date for bidding for the 4,000 Mw Tilaiya Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) has been deferred to December 29 as many short-listed bidders asked for more time, even as pre-project work was running behind schedule, officials said.

The Mumbai attacks and the ongoing political changes also unnerved investors who are already grappling with the global financial crisis.

This is the second postponement for the Rs 16,000-18,000 crore project, price bids for which were originally slated to be received on November 4. This was subsequently deferred to December 1.

This, however, does not mean that companies are not interested in the project. “At least 2-3 bidders are ready to quote,” said power secretary Anil Razdan.

Tata Power is one of the nine companies which has qualified to bid for the pithead coal project. Other companies in the race include NTPC, Reliance Power, Essar Power, L&T and Sterlite Industries.

Coal for the project is to be sourced from the North Karanpura coalfields, which are 70 km away from the project site. A consensus has recently been arrived at on the contentious issue of the capital cost of constructing the railway link between the site and coalfields.

“According to the new estimate, the cost of the rail route has been finalised at Rs 8 crore per km,” said Razdan.

Tilaiya would be the fourth ultra mega power project to come up in the country on a public-private partnership basis through tariff-based competitive bidding. Reliance Power has bagged two of these UMPPs — at Sasan in Madhya Pradesh and Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, while Tata Power has bagged the Mundra UMPP in Gujarat.

According to the original schedule, the successful bidder was to have been selected over 16 months ago —in July last year.

The government has envisaged capacity addition of 100,000 Mw by 2012 and the achievement of this target requires the development of large power projects like UMPPs.