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• The highways ministry has put paid to the Planning Commission's move to stall the award of road contracts towards the end of this fiscal.Gajendra Haldea, adviser to Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, had written to the highways ministry on Friday suggesting that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) should not bunch the projects just before the end of the financial year. Haldea had mentioned that NHAI could not award projects for the past few months, but had readied the plan to award several stretches in the last one week, at least three sources familiar with the contents of the letter said.

• "He has written that the plan to open 13-14 bids on Friday and awarding them on Saturday would not be right, while staggering them would bring better competition. There is no reason why the bids cannot be awarded if the bids quoted by developers are within the permissible parameter," said a source.But road transport and highways ministry, however, asked NHAI to go ahead with its plan so that the annual target of 7,300 km is met. The highways authority is likely to award about 1,400 km with a total project cost of approximately Rs 14,000 crore this week.

• When contacted on Monday evening highways minister C P Joshi told TOI, "We are sure of awarding 7,300 km by end-March, and we have everything in place to achieve the target set for this fiscal year."Ironically, NHAI opened a bid for 110km Sholapur-Bijapur stretch for which the preferred bidder has quoted Rs 75.6 crore premium against the government projection of 7.5% government grant - viability gap fund (VGF). "We are expecting good bids. There is no sign of poor competition. In this case, 13 out of 16 bidders had quoted premium," said an NHAI official.

• He added in case of projects which need VGF, if the bids quoted are 5% more or less than what has been factored in the provision bidding criteria, these can easily be awarded.In order to push the awarding of projects and to meet the target, the ministry had even taken a one-time relief from the Cabinet to go ahead with the bidding process even without getting approval from an inter-ministerial committee. "How can we allow things to go haywire at the eleventh hour because of a letter? What will we tell the Cabinet if we fail to meet the target even after getting a relaxation? The finance minister has also increased the target to 8,800 km for the next fiscal year. So, if we go slow, it would be difficult to meet 2012-13 target," an official said.

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