Tuesday, January 24 2006 09:55 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: The empowered Group of Ministers on modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports would meet here today (Jan 23, 2006) even as a Left constituent, RSP, complained of lack of transparency in the process and asked the government to put it on hold and hand over the task to the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

It is understood that the eGoM would discuss the possibilities of broad basing the criteria for the bid process in light of the recommendations of the E Sreedharan-led Group of Eminent Technical Experts (GETE), so as to allow more than one bidder for each of the two metro airports.

Meanwhile, RSP leader Abani Roy today shot off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, saying any move to include bidders rejected by the GETE to include more bidders in the race would not be above board. Such a move, he said, would be "biased in favour of certain parties" and would be 'a matter of investigation'.

"I fear that this is being done to deliberately weaken and eventually deal a deathblow to AAI", Roy said.

While undertaking fresh evaluation of all the six bidders, the GETE is learnt to have downgraded Reliance-led consortium below the qualifying level of 80 points and also lowered the marks of the GMR-Fraport consortium. However, the ranking of bidders is said to be on the same line of ranking adopted by the global technical advisor AirPlan.

The RSP leader said the Sreedharan panel had recommended that the airport, which is not assigned to any party, should be taken up for modernisation through a special purpose vehicle (SPV) with government participation including the AAI.

"I feel that the current exercise should be reviewed in order to ensure and maximise credibility and transparency. Instead, the entire job of modernisation should be allowed to be handled by the AAI", Roy said.

The eGoM is slated to open the financial bids on the basis of rankings in the technical bids the same day and take a decision to award the contract by the month-end, sources maintained.

The Committee of Secretaries (CoS) led by Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi has already submitted its report on the fresh findings of the GETE for the eGoM to take a final view on the matter. It is understood to have gone against a view to reject the Sreedharan panel findings.

The GETE had earlier reiterated that a quick bid among other pre-qualified bidders be undertaken to award the contract for the second airport.

If the proposal for broad basing the criterion is adopted by the eGoM, the bids of GMR Fraport, Reliance-ASA (Mexico), D S Construction-Munich Airport and GVK-South African airport are likely to be considered as per the rankings.