Even as the clock is ticking away, many of the pending issues are yet to be resolved. A series of meetings were scheduled to take place this month between the promoters, finance and power ministry officials and the state legal representatives, to resolve several bottlenecks pertaining to these three projects.

According to official sources, it was decided at the June 30 meeting between the finance ministry, power ministry and the chief ministers of various states that discussions on the Hinduja's Vizag project will start from July 1 followed by Bhadrawati power project on July 3 and ST-CMS Neyveli on July 13.

The second round of discussions on Hinduja's power project is scheduled on July 10. Interestingly, till date only the first round of discussions have takenplace with the Hindujas and there has been no meeting after that with promoters of other fast track projects.

Even the minutes of the June 30 meeting, which were to clarify some of the grey areas raised by the participants have not been issued so far.For instance during the meeting the finance ministry officials agreed to look into the objections raised by the state government pretaining to the certification requirement from the advocate general and chief secretary of the state government along with the chairman, central electricity authority (CEA), as stipulated in the draft counter guarantee agreement issued to various states.

As per the draft agreement, a certificate from the above mentioned was required certifying that the power purchase agreements (PPAs) for these fast track projects are in line with the regulations and are compatible as per the international standards.

The finance ministry had agreed to look into this aspect, the details of which were to come in the minutes of the meeting.

Otherissues which the finance ministry was to clarify in the minutes of the June 30 meeting pretained to the extension of the tax holiday for these projects, tax burden on foreign exchange variation and approval of equity of structure of captive coal mines and sale of coal to the Maharashtra State Electricty Board (MSEB) for the Bhadrawati project.

The minutes, however, are yet to be released by the finance ministry.It may also be noted here that a letter was issued by the power ministry on May 17, stating that competitive bidding be made necessary for the EPC contract for these fast track projects.

To this the promoters of these peojects along with the respective state government's had stongly objected, as most of them had already selected the EPC contractors almost five to six years back, when the fast track projects were awarded to them. The finance and the power ministry indicated that it will do away with this condition and a clarification to this was again to be issued in the minutes of the June 30meeting. In case of Bhadrawati power project, although the power and the coal ministries have agreed to give alternative mines to the promoters, clearance from the defence ministry is yet to come and as a result of this, the project is stuck up.

Moreover, RTZ of Australia, who have agreed to develop captive coal mines for the Bhadrawati power project are unable to start work pending approvals from the coal ministry. The coal ministry approvals can come only after the defence ministry gives its clearance for developing these mines.

Sources said that the finance ministry has turned down the request of the state governments to waive the 1.2 per cent counter guarantee fee to be paid to the Centre by the IPP and also that this should be a pass through to the state electricity board.