Stalin’s charge baseless: Thangamani

Talking to reporters at Namakkal, he asked, “How can there be irregularities when the procurement has not taken place.” Describing Stalin’s charges as baseless, he compared the present power situation with that prevailed during the DMK regime.

Recalling the days of power outages, he said the outages extended to 18 hours per day and the TNEB’s debts rose to Rs 35,000 crore.

The Minister denied that pressure was exerted on the TNEB chairman and said the Board is procuring equipment in a transparent manner through e-tender process. During Cyclone Vardah, when 54 electric towers, 50,000 posts, 4,000 pillar boxes ad 800 transformers were damaged, the board rectified the situation within two days. Tamil Nadu had become a power surplus state and the debts had been reduced to Rs 5,000 crore, he said.

A TANGEDCO press release also denied the allegations and said that the reports of allegations were based on the one-sided representation of Capital Power Systems. It also accused the company of carrying out a malicious campaign with the intent to tarnish the image of the TANGEDCO in the eyes of general public.

As the tender has not been finalised yet and only price bids have been opened and are still under negotiation, the campaign of the bidder Capital Power Systems is malicious with the intent to tarnish the image of the TANGEDCO, the release said.

The tender documents of all the 13 bidders have been evaluated as per tender specification requirements. As per the tender’s technical specifications if the sample meters are found not conforming to the technical requirements then the price bids will not be opened and the offer will be rejected.

Since Capital Power System and other five firms had not complied with the technical requirements of the tender, the price bids of the firms were rejected and not opened. Out of the 13 bidders, the price bids of seven eligible firms, who complied with all the requirements of the tender specifications, had been opened on November 3.

The negotiation with the firm who quoted the lowest offered price is under way and the tender is not yet finalised, Tangedco added.

“Purchase orders were placed for an amount of Rs 453 crore in the previous tender in June 2017 and as the above order was issued only three months ago, the bidder is being negotiated to match the above price. If the bidder does not match the previous purchase order rate, then the TANGEDCO will not finalise the tender,” the release added.