Friday, January 13 2006 09:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Committing to award the Rs 5,400 crore projects to modernise Delhi and Mumbai airports by this month-end, the empowered Group of Ministers yesterday (Jan 12, 2006) asked for some clarifications from the Sreedharan Committee on evaluation of bids and procedures, a move that may keep alive hopes of the Reliance-led consortium.

Immediately after the eGoM, headed by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told reporters, "We have asked for more clarifications from Sreedharan Committee". In the face of controversy over evaluation of bidders, Sreedharan Committee was entrusted with the responsibility of going through the entire process and it recommended earlier this week that options, including re-bids, be exercised while bringing down Reliance-ASA consortium below the earlier stipulated qualifying marks of 80.

Patel, however, maintained that the January 31 deadline for clearing the project would be met, even though he did not specify the time limit given to the Sreedharan Committee.

Though Patel did not elaborate as to what clarifications were being sought from the expert committee, sources said that some of the eGoM members wanted it to go through all the bids on the same ground as it had evaluated the Reliance-ASA as a sample case.

During the nearly two hour long meeting, which was also attended by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the eGoM did not appear inclined to accept the Sreedharan Committee's recommendation on re-bids as was clear from Patel's reiteration of meeting the January 31 deadline.

The eGoM meeting followed a demand by Left parties earlier in the day at UPA-Left coordination committee meeting that the bids be scrapped and the modernisation charge be given to Airports Authority of India. The Left leaders also alleged that bidding process was tainted.

This has led to possibility of the eGoM considering lowering of qualification marks to 70, a suggestion that had been made earlier to eGoM by some members of the inter ministerial group that considered the entire issue.

Sources said that one option before eGoM thus could be to seek final price bids from top three-four bidders in case they qualify for the two airports for maintaining its January 31 deadline.

Earlier, Planning Commission representative Gajendra Haldea had raised some objections during the IMG on qualification procedure and had even suggested re-bidding.