WHY DID THE SC REFER TO NTPC?
For the simple reason, that in spite of being a government-owned power generation company, NTPC was an aggrieved party vis-a-vis the price approved by the government. How? Before the family agreement in 2005, and much before the government approved the price of 4.20 dollar per unit that too for a 5-year period, the RIL had offered a price of 2.34 dollar per unit for the same gas for the 2600 MW Kawas & Gandhar projects of NTPC in response to an international competitive bid floated by NTPC in 2004. Let us recapitulate what the then minister of power Jairam Ramesh informed the parliament on this issue on 20.2.2009. “NTPC invited bids under International Competitive Bidding for procurement of natural gas @ 132 trillion British thermal units per annum for Kawas-II and Gandhar-II power projects for a period of 17 years. Reliance Industries was evaluated as the lowest techno commercially acceptable bidder and NTPC accepted its offer. Accordingly a Letter of Intent (LoI) was issued to RIL on
