Corporate giants Reliance Energy, Tata Power and Essar are among the 11 companies left in the fray for the two 4,000 MW power projects to be set in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh at an investment of Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) each.
State-run Power Finance Corporation, the nodal agency to conduct the bidding for these projects, has received 16 techno-commercial bids for the ultra mega power projects.
While 10 Request for Proposals (RfPs) have been submitted for the pithead coal-fired Sasan project in Madhya Pradesh, six companies are in the race for imported coal-based Mundra power plant in Gujarat, industry sources said.
Five companies -- Tata Power, Anil Ambani group company REL, engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, the Ruia-controlled Essar Power and Vedanta group firm Sterlite Industries -- have bid for both the projects, the sources said.
Adani Exports Ltd is the sixth bidder for the Mundra project. In Sasan, other companies are state-run NTPC Ltd, Torrent Power, Jaiprakash Associates Ltd, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd and Lanco-Globoleq consortium.
While the technical bids were opened on Thursday, the price bids would be opened on December 11. The two projects would be awarded to the selected developers by December 29.
Earlier this year, PFC had received 38 expression of interest (EoIs) for Sasan and 36 EoIs for Mundra. Of these, 13 companies had qualified in the first stage of bidding (Request for Qualification) for Sasan and 11 for Mundra.
The number of companies that are left in the final stage of bidding has further come down. While CESC, GMR, AES India Ltd withdrew their bids for Sasan project; Lanco-SNC Lavalin consortium, Japan's Sumitomo Corporation and CLP Power (I) dropped out from Mundra project.