Govt to invite bids for 4 UMPPs in 3-6 months: Goyal

On Thursday, the govt abandoned bidding process of two ultra mega power projects in Odisha and Tamil Nadu and decided to soon set up a committee to move it forward

The government is looking to start a fresh process of inviting bids for ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) at four locations in the country in the next three-six months, Power Minister Piyush Goyal today said.

"These four proposed UMPPs include two for which we have cancelled the bid and we will be inviting fresh bids, and two more have been identified - one in Bihar and another in Jharkhand," Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on the sidelines of Economic Times Power Summit.

The Minister said he is hopeful the process of inviting bids will start in the next three to six months.

On Thursday, the government abandoned bidding process of two ultra mega power projects in Odisha and Tamil Nadu and decided to soon set up a committee to move it forward.

The private firms, which had participated in the first round of bidding for both the projects, withdrew their bids citing difficulties in securing finances for the projects.

For the Tamil Nadu UMPP, the private companies in the fray were Adani Power, CLP India, Jindal Steel & power, JSW Energy, Sterlite Energy and Tata Power. Of these, four bought the Request For Proposal documents but decided not to go ahead further in the process.

The Odisha UMPP saw nine interested bidders, including Adani Power, CLP India, GMR Energy, Jindal Steel and Power, JSW Energy and Sterlite Energy.

After the private companies pulled out, only NTPC and NHPC were left for bidding.

UMPP is a coal-based power project of 4,000 MW generation capacity.

So far, four UMPPs have been awarded. Of this, Sasan (Madhya Pradesh), Krishnapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Tilaiya (Jharkhand) have been bagged by Reliance Power. Tata Power is operating the Mundra UMPP in Gujarat.