PANAJI: After receiving chief minister Pramod Sawant’s nod, Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) has decided to skip the appointment of a consultant. It will instead directly appoint a mine-developer-cum operator (MDO) through an e-auction. The decision has been taken due to paucity of time, GIDC officials said.
Speaking to TOI, GIDC managing director Derrick P Neto said the e-tender will have to be floated within the next fortnight so the MDO can be appointed before November 28. The Union coal ministry has given GIDC till Novemberend to complete all formalities and take over the Dongri Tal phase II coal block at Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh, which was allocated to the state in September 2019.
“We have to float the tender in the next two weeks and we will do so after we get the required government approvals,” Neto said.
Initially, industries minister Vishwajit Rane had asked GIDC to appoint a consultant to assist the state corporation in selecting an MDO and guiding the state on utilisation of the coal block. A selection committee, headed by the industries secretary, and a monitoring committee, headed by Rane, were supposed to select the consultant. The process, however, never took off.
On October 7, Sawant chaired a meeting with GIDC and industries department officials where he asked GIDC to directly appoint the MDO, without selecting a Consultant.
“Because of this, some fresh approvals will have to be sought,” Neto said.
Since 2016 GIDC has tried to get its hand on a coal block to meet Goa’s industrial power requirement. In 2018, the Union ministry wrote to the state government informing that new coal blocks were in the process of being allocated to states and state government corporations.
An earlier attempt to source coal and then supply it to a private power company failed in 2014 when the Supreme Court quashed the allocation of the Gare Pelma sector-III coal block in Chhattisgarh, on grounds that the allocations were done in an arbitrary, non-transparent manner and were against public interest.
