The manner in which bidders are shortlisted will also be made clear before bidders submit bids. Rail Bhavan has asked the finance ministry to indicate whether conflict of interest (CoI) clause is to be applied first or the domain expertise is to be calculated first while assessing the bids. “If the CoI is taken first then a large number may get rejected who actually have good domain expertise,” the official said. It is understood that the government may finally place a limit of five per cent cross shareholding under the conflict of interest clause and raise it from the current one per cent suggested by Planning Commission.

On the issue of getting an experience certificate from statutory auditors for the bidding process, the railways has suggested to the finance ministry that a certificate from the director finance or managing director of the company should suffice as not only auditors can certify the company’s expertise in a particular infrastructure sector. This issue had been raised by road developers as well when a few bids got rejected as the infrastructure firms did not have the supporting document.

The final view is to be taken by the public-private-partnership appraisal committee (PPPAC), after which the players will be asked to submit bids for the project.