LAHORE: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has decided to invite fresh bids for the Neelum-Jehlum transmission line project and also take it back to the National Transmission and Dispatch Company from the Water and Power Development Authority.

According to sources, the prime minister took the decision to end a six-month controversy over corruption and mismanagement allegations relating to the Rs25 billion project and ordered that the tendering process be made transparent.

Mr Sharif, sources said, intervened because continued mishandling of the project by the ministry of water and power and Wapda threatened to become the first mega scandal for his government.

According to the new plan, the NTDC would now go for the gallop tender and divide the project in two segments. In the first phase, 145km line will be built to connect the project to the national grid at Domeli by December 2015. The line between Domeli and Gakhar will be undertaken after the first phase and the project will be completed by January 2017.

Work in the first phase will be split into three independent lots and the NTDC will invite separate bids for each of them. The consultants, Nespak-Barqaab Joint venture, submitted what they called plan-B in January this year for quick construction of the project, bringing it online by December 2015, coinciding with the switching-on of the first machine.

The line will be built by the NTDC with its own resources and only national competitive bidding will be called. The consultants have proposed heavy penalties for delay and attractive incentives for contractors for early completion so that entire work could be finished by the end of next year.

The NTDC had floated tenders of the transmission line in January 2012 and started the bidding process but kept it lingering beyond a reasonable period.

When the PML-N came to power at the centre last year, the project attained renewed focus because the government wanted its completion to ease the energy crisis.

Taking advantage of the situation, the NTDC tried to short-circuit the process and grant the contract to a Chinese company at an exorbitant price of Rs25bn, against the competitive bid of Rs13bn.

In the meantime, the NTDC’s new board of directors took over which noticed contractual mistakes, refused to go along with the decision taken by the managing director and ordered re-tendering of the project.

Then the ministry of water and power withdrew the project from the NTDC, shifted it to Wapda and asked it to oblige the same contractor.

The project hit a new controversy when during a meeting at Wapda, its member finance produced a damning dissenting note pointing out numerous contractual violations and refused to be part of the process.

The new managing director of the NTDC, Mr Tahir Mahmood, said “the company is now preparing the tendering documents afresh and will float them in the coming week. It already had plan-B for the line and it will now become the guiding line for quick construction”.

He said the NTDC would try its best to complete the project on time.