Anil Ambani's troubles with the government's evaluation of his group's project bids, be it for airport construction or natural gas, seem never ending.
On each occasion, the government's "discretionary" power has led to the group claiming that its bids have been marked down.
Now, a group company - Reliance Natural Resources Ltd - may partly lose out on its move to bag natural gas reserves, which are to be allotted in the ongoing third round of bidding for coal bed methane blocks.
This, the company has said, is on account of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, and the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas invoking their "discretion" to award three extra marks while evaluating the bids of R-ADAG's competitor, the Tata-Arrow consortium, for two CBM blocks.
The point of contention is the way the government fixed parameters for which discretionary marks could be allowed. The parameters were fixed after the bids were received for CBM-III, but before they were evaluated.
Objecting in writing to the award of discretionary marks to its competitors, RNRL said the notice inviting offers for CBM-III had "neither provided any limitation on the number of blocks that could be bid by a bidder, nor provided any limitation on the number of blocks that could be awarded to any bidder."
RNRL raised this matter twice; first on July 28 in a letter to Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, and followed it up with another missive on August 4, this time addressed to petroleum secretary M S Srinivasan, stating that the details of "the three marks were not part of the NIO, and the award of these marks is non-transparent, internal, and hence arbitrary. These three marks may play a decisive role in selecting the winning bidder, where two or more bidders are more or less equal on all other objective criteria."
An empowered committee of secretaries chaired by Srinivasan discussed the issue on August 10, and discounted the RNRL contention on the matter. The committee pointed out that discretion on marks was contained in the NIO.
The meeting also discussed each recommended (top) bidder for the blocks, and authorised the petroleum ministry to go ahead, and seek the Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs' approval for awarding the blocks.
Accordingly, the CCEA's approval has been sought for awarding RNRL four blocks, the Arrow-Gail-EIG-Tata consortium three blocks, Coalgas-DIL-Adinath consortium two blocks, and BPE one block.