Mukesh and Anil Ambani: The argument continues

Mumbai, Sept 11: Brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani are squaring off for another battle.

Reliance Energy Ltd, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group company, was today permitted by the Supreme Court to bid for the Mumbai trans harbour sea link project where a consortium led by elder brother Mukesh Ambani is in the fray.

Setting aside a Bombay High Court order, an apex court bench, comprising Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice S H Kapadia, directed REL to submit its financial bid for the project within three months.

“We hold that REL/Hyundai Engineering and Construction consortium was erroneously excluded from the second stage of bidding ... Since we have allowed this civil appeal, we extend the period for presenting financial bids by REL/HECL up to December 15, 2007,” it said.

The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Ltd (MSRDC) had earlier disqualified a consortium of REL and HECL from bidding for building the country's longest sea link expressway to be built at an estimated cost of between Rs 2,600 crore and Rs 4,000 crore.

MSRDC had disqualified the REL-Hyundai consortium on the ground that the Korean firm did not have a net worth of Rs 200 crore – a key criterion. REL, however, had argued that it alone met that criterion and approached the Supreme Court.

Flaying MSRDC for vagueness in the terms and conditions of the bid, the apex court said the tenders must indicate with “legal certainty, norms and benchmarks, otherwise, it may violate doctrine of level playing field”.

The Mumbai Trans Harbour project is a prized order as it will be India’s longest sealink expressway of 25km between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai on design, build, own, operate and transfer (DBOOT) basis. The private sector developer will be required to design, finance, construct, operate and maintain the project and will be entitled to toll collection during the concession period.

The “concession period” is part of the bidding criteria. The bidders with the lowest “concession period” will be awarded the project. MSRDC was the nodal agency to undertake the bidding process.

Out of the six consortia that submitted the pre-qualification documents, three were shortlisted to submit the technical and financial bid. They were Sea King Infrastructure Ltd (SKIL) of Mukesh Ambani and IL&FS led consortium, Larsen & Toubro and Gammon led consortium and another consortium of Iffco.