VIJAYAWADA: With the State government deciding to float a fresh tender for Polavaram irrigation and hydel power project and also issuing modalities for reverse tendering on Friday, the Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) has written a letter to the Water Resources department to put the entire process on hold.
With the unexpected missive from the PPA, the State officials are now in a fix whether or not to release the tender as planned on Saturday.
The officials intimated the same to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, who left for the US, and are awaiting directions.
“A letter has been sent by the PPA on Friday to Special Chief Secretary (Water Resources) Adityanath Das advising the department to not to go for retendering without a valid reason or to hold the process until the Union Ministry of Water Resources communicates its stand on the issue,” sources told TNIE.
“We have received the PPA’s advisory asking that the retendering be deferred. It is just an advisory and the minutes of the emergency meeting held on Tuesday are yet to be sent to us.
However, we have informed the Chief Minister about the issue and are awaiting his directions,” a top official said.
The Water Resources department, in the evening, issued an order detailing the modalities for reverse tendering/reverse auctioning process to be followed for the engineering projects, including Polavaram.
State government may not release fresh tender today
Sources further added that the department may not release the fresh tender on Saturday. “Since the Chief Minister is in the US, it will take time for communication.
We may now float the tender early next week,” the official added.
For the record, the Water Resources department had issued pre-closure notices to Navayuga Engineering Company Ltd (NECL) and Bekem Infra Ltd on July 29 citing that the expert committee, constituted to examine the contract awarded to the companies, recommended termination due to irregularities.
The firms had also given their consent with a condition that a few financial claims be resolved.
However, the Centre and the PPA had raised concerns that retendering may result in cost escalation and delay the project execution.
The PPA also held an emergency meeting on Tuesday and advised the State to reconsider its decision.
Since the PPA did not ‘explicitly’ object to the State’s decision, the government had decided to go ahead with its plan.
Though the State has been arguing that reverse tendering would bring down the cost of the projects, it is unsure if bidders would actually quote lesser than the previous contract value. “We’ll have to see if there would be lower bids.
We are going for reverse tendering to correct the anomalies in the previous contract and bring in transparency.
We will see what happens when the tenders are floated,” Water Resources Minister P Anil Kumar told media persons on Friday to a query if the government was confident of the decline in project cost.
He further added that any company, including NECL, could participate in the retendering process. “We plan to have the contractor on board by mid-September so that the works can be resumed from November 1, once the flooding of Godavari ends,” the minister noted.
Officials in a fix