Reliance airport bid in trouble

Sreedharan committee nixes Anil Ambani's bid.

The three-member committee headed by Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan, entrusted with re-evaluating the bids for the privatisation and modernisation of the Mumbai and Delhi airports, has recommended rejection of the bid by the Reliance-ASA consortium, so far seen as a front-runner, according to an agency report.

The Sreedharan committee today submitted its report to the committee of secretaries looking into the matter. The report caused quite a sensation.

The committee of secretaries, headed by Cabinet Secretary BK Chaturvedi, will take up the report tomorrow, while an empowered group of ministers will take it up on Thursday.

The Sreedharan panel is said to have suggested a lowering of the marks received by the Reliance-ASA consortium on grounds of managerial capability and transition plan.

The panel's recommendation is not binding on the committee of secretaries or empowered group of ministers. However, if accepted, it will leave only one bidder in the fray, as only Reliance-ASA and GMR-Fraport are said to have met the criterion of 80 marks out of 100.

That will leave one of the two airports without a bidder since both cannot go to the same party. This has fuelled speculation that the empowered group of ministers""headed by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee ""may seek fresh bids in 15 days from all the bidders. An extreme scenario would be to include more bidders in the race.

The empowered group of ministers had met last on December 23 and formed the committee of secretaries""whose members are Planning Commission Member-Secretary RR Shah, Civil Aviation Secretary Ajay Prasad and Economic Affairs Secretary A K Jha""due to differences over the technical evaluation of the bids within the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) on the project.

The Inter-Ministerial Group consists of officials from the Planning Commission and from the finance, civil aviation and law ministries. The finance ministry has taken a strong stand against the clamour for re-bidding.

The ministry has gone to the extent of telling the IMG that the whole process should rather be scrapped than going in for rebidding.