State-owned PDIL has been issued a letter of acceptance for providing pre-award consultancy services to set up a coal-to-methanol project at Coal India arm SECL's Dankuni Coal Complex, CIL said Tuesday.
The development assumes significance as Coal India (CIL) is aiming to produce 6.76 lakh tonne of methanol per annum to boost clean energy initiatives.
"The offer of PDIL (Projects & Development India Ltd) was techno-commercially accepted and the letter of acceptance was issued to them," said a spokesperson of CIL.
Projects & Development India Ltd and consultant engineering firm M N Dastur were vying for the said job.
The CIL spokesperson said M N Dastur & Co had emerged as provisional L-1 (lowest) bidder through the reverse auction process upon understanding furnished by the company which was subject to verification of documents.
However, its offer was rejected due to non-compliance of confirmatory documents and not fulfilling the requirements as per the eligibility criteria, even after providing them opportunity to submit shortfall documents, the spokesperson added.
"Subsequently, as per the provisions of the NIT (notice inviting tender), the offer submitted by the next lower bidder, i.e. Projects and Development India Ltd, a Government of India undertaking, was evaluated and they were found to have fulfilled the eligibility criteria as per NIT," he said.
However, M N Dastur Vice-President Abhijit Sarkar said, "We were not only the lowest bidder, but also the most qualified bidder. Therefore, our disqualification is clearly not on the basis of merit. Nobody in India, apart from M N Dastur, has worked on commercial scale coal gasification and related downstream in chemicals."