Just days after the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) was directed by the government to revise its eligibility conditions in the model ‘request for qualification’ (RFQ) document for road projects, now the shipping department has demanded that further changes or relaxations to the RFQ norms for port development projects as well.

The ‘controversial’ RFQ document for infrastructure projects being offered through public-private partnerships (PPPs) on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis provides guidelines based on which at the most five or six bidders can be shortlisted for the project. The shipping ministry has, however, asked for this very clause to be amended so that any upper limit on the number of shortlisted bidders may be done away with. This was the case originally before the new RFQ norms came into practice.

The demand comes in the backdrop of a row over the shortlisting of bidders for the mega-container terminal at Ennore Port. The Rs 1,300-crore project, for which six bidders were shortlisted in July, has attracted several lawsuits challenging the validity of the shortlisting process. As of now, the list of shortlisted bidders has gone for the approval of the Public-Private Partnership Approval Committee so that a request for proposal (RFP) may be prepared.

According to official sources, if the project gets a stay order from the Chennai High Court, it could change the course of the other ongoing port development projects across the country with a total envisaged investment of more than Rs 55,000 crore under the UPA government’s National Maritime Development Programme. Of this, around Rs 34,000 are expected to come from the private sector.

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