By IANS
New Delhi : The 4,000 megawatt Sasan Ultra Mega Project in Madhya Pradesh will be awarded to Reliance Energy, a part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), it was announced here Monday.
A meeting of the empowered group of ministers, set up specifically under Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde to resolve all matters, accepted Reliance Energy's revised bid for the project, which offers electricity at Rs.1.19616 per unit.
"The empowered group of ministers has advised that the procurer should consider taking immediate action to issue the letter of intent to the lowest bidder," an official statement said, announcing Reliance Energy as the winner.
The decision was arrived at after Reliance Energy, Jaiprakash Associates and the state-run National Thermal Corp submitted revised bids for the project and Anil Asmbani's company emerged the lowest bidder.
"We are delighted to have won India's largest ultra mega power project through an international competitive bidding process. We look forward to building this world class infrastructure facility," Ambani said in a statement.
"The Rs.20,000 crore (Rs.200 billion or $4.8 billion) investment in Sasan will contribute to accelerating India's economic growth by substantially raising the current generation capacity."
The ministerial panel had earlier disqualified the bid by a consortium of Lanco Infratech-Globeleq, saying there was misrepresentation of financial data due to the withdrawal of Globeleq from the proposed project.
The dispute over the project arose after Lanco's foreign partner, Globeleq, sold its 70 percent stake in the joint venture to Lanco and Jindal Steel and Power after winning the bid in December.
The panel had asked Sasan Power, a holding company set up by the Power Finance Corp, to examine the future course of action in the project. But the board of Sasan Power left it to the government to take any decision it deemed fit.
Reliance Energy distributes more than 21 billion units of electricity to over 25 million consumers in Mumbai, New Delhi, Orissa and Goa, and generates 941 megawatt of power from units in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and Goa.
It is currently pursuing several gas, coal, wind and hydro-based electricity generation projects in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal with aggregate capacity of over 12,500 megawatt.