Last year, four Indian companies, Hindustan construction, Patil engineering, Maytas and Gamon limited submitted their bids for the tender floated by DHPA in August.

The Indian publication, Business Standard, on January 3 stated that Teja Raju, founder and chairman of Satyam computer services has taken additional charge as chief executive officer of the 23-year-old Maytas Infra.

It also stated that the move came after the arrest of Maytas Infra CEO P K Madhav on December 16, 2008, along with K S Raju, chairman of the Nagarjuna group, over the alleged failure to repay about Rs 1B (billion) to its depositors.

An emergency DHPA board meeting was held on December 24, where the members, before taking any decisions, decided to wait for the Asian development bank’s (ADB) stand on the situation.

“We expect ADB to respond by January 10, however the work hadn’t been awarded to anyone so far and there’s been no official contact with Maytas Infra,” said an official of DHPA. “We’ve informed Tata Power, holding 26 percent of DHPA equity share to verify the situation.” The rest of the equity is owned by Druk green power corporation (59 percent) and national pension and provident fund (15 percent).

The total cost of the DHPA project is US$ 201M (million), of which US$ 80M civil work was funded by ADB and US$ 60M electro-mechanic work funded by the Austrian government, according to DHPA officials.

The Druk holding and investment (DHI), a government holding company formed in November 2007, had earlier taken over the implementation of the Dungsam cement project in Nganglam and the Dagachhu hydropower project in Dagana. The two projects were formally handed over to DHI by the ministry of economic affairs on March 17, 2008, in Thimphu.