Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd’s proposal is 12.6 per cent lower than the earlier contract awarded for execution of the hydel power plant and main concrete works of the mega Polavaram irrigation project in Andhra Pradesh.

In the reverse tendering initiative of the AP government, MEIL’s bid of Rs 4,358 crore is Rs 628 crore lower lower than the Rs 4,987-crore contract awarded earlier. This was cancelled by the AP govenment after Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy took office as Chief Minister of AP, after a resounding victory earlier this year.

MEIL was the only company to bid in the re-tender invited by AP, for works worth Rs 4,987 crore, .

Megha Engineering will begin work on the project as soon as the court permits it to do so.

The state government had cancelled the Polavaram contracts. A preliminary quote by L-1, the only company bidding, was considered as the base estimate cost.

The previous government had awarded a Rs 2,346-crore contract for a hydropower station along with the Polavaram project, but works could not be taken up.

Transtroy, a company owned by TDP leader Rayapati Sambasiva Rao, which won the Polavaram construction contract in 2012, could not complete the work. The Chandrababu Naidu-led government later entrusted the works through sub-contracting.

The Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government had cancelled the contracts and called for reverse tenders for the Polavaram project headworks and hydropower station, estimated at Rs 4,987 crore.

Megha was the only bidder for these works. Earlier, MEIL had constructed the Pattiseema lift irrigation scheme, and has been engaged with the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project in Telangana.

The Polavaram project has been taken up to supply water to 7.2 lakh acres of agricultural land, generate 960 MW of hydel power, transfer 80 TMC water to the Krishna River and about 23.44 TMC of drinking water to Visakhapatnam city.

State govt violating CVC norms

Ch R.S. Sarma from Vizag reports: Former irrigation minister D. Umamaheswara Rao took exception to the reported decision of the Jagan Mohan Reddy government to award the remaining head works and the hydel power plant works to MEIL.

He told the media in Vijayawada on Monday that the state government had initiated "the reverse tendering drama" on August 16, by issuing a GO in which it was clearly stated that if there was only a single bidder, the tendering process should be started afresh and "there should at least be two bidders."

He said it seemed clear that the state government was awarding the contract to MEIL. "How can the government violate its own guidelines and GOs? And, in any event, if there is only a single bidder, how can it be called reverse tendering? It is some sort of match-fixing."

He said the state government was also violating with impunity the guidelines of the Central Vigilance Commission in awarding contracts in such a major irrigation project. In awarding the contract to Max Infra for a portion of the Polavaram project works, he alleged, CVC guidelines had been violated.

Several other TDP leaders spoke in the same tenor and some of them pointed out that a case filed by the Navayuga Engineering Company, which had lost the contract after the new Government took over, was still pending in the AP High Court.

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