Last year, China added a record 105 Giga Watt (GW) or over 100,000 MW of fresh power capacity in one year. However, in India, forget delivery of capacity, for the past six months, the country’s largest greenfield power project is on standby mode. Six months after it chose a bidder for the 4,000- MW Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) at Sasan in Madhya Pradesh and gave it a Letter of Intent, the Union Power Ministry now cannot decide whether or not to award the contract.

The estimated Rs 16,000-crore project is expected to supply power to eight states: MP, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal and Chhattisgarh.

The validity of the bids — there were nine in all — was supposed to expire today and has been extended by a month. The file buck will now be passed to another decision-making body, possibly a Group of Ministers or the inter-Ministerial Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee.

Last December, after a year-long process, Lanco-Globeleq (Singapore) — a consortium of Andhra-based Lanco group whose chairman is Congress MP L Rajagopal and Globeleq, the Singapore-based arm of a UK power firm — was chosen based on its lowest tariff of Rs 1.196 per unit.

Anil Ambani’s Reliance Energy Limited ranked second with Rs 1.3 per unit. Other bidders (see box) included Jindal Power and Tata Power.

Lanco-Globeleq got the Letter of Intent (LoI) after being cleared by an evaluation committee, headed by HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh and including state and Ministry officials.

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