New Delhi, June 25 (PTI): The Supreme Court today extended the stay on the bidding process for the Rs 2,600-crore sea link expressway between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. The order came as a relief to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Energy Ltd.

Hearing a petition filed by Reliance Energy, a bench headed by Justice Tarun Chatterjee extended the stay granted by Bombay High Court, which had restrained the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) from opening the bids for the project.

The apex court has extended the interim stay till July 24, the next date of hearing. The high court had stayed the opening of the bids till July 2.

The MSRDC is the nodal agency for implementing the 22.5km project, the country’s longest sea link scheme that will reduce the travelling time between Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.

Mukesh Ambani-led Sea King Infrastructure is leading the race to bag the project.

A consortium led by Reliance Energy, which includes Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company, has challenged the MSRDC’s decision to disqualify it from the bidding process. Reliance Energy said the MSRDC had disqualified the consortium on the ground that Hyundai did not meet the criterion of Rs 200-crore net worth.

Seeking to set the MSRDC’s decision aside, Reliance counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, S. Ganesh and Syed Naqvi said Reliance Energy’s net worth was more than the requirement from the consortium.

They further sought a direction to the Maharashtra government to allow the consortium to participate in the second stage of the bidding process.

The Reliance Energy counsel contended that the MSRDC and consultant Crisil’s decision was arbitrary as they applied wrong accounting standards for calculating net profit.

“There was a clear and complete fallacy in Crisil’s opinion as it had treated income on accrual basis as cash income and cash outflow when there was a reversal of the same, thus completely mixing up two distinct accounting methods — the cash system and the mercantile system of accounting,” the Reliance Energy petition stated.

The MSRDC did not cite any specific accounting standard while disqualifying its bid. Besides, it did not agree to the high court’s suggestion to appoint a panel of chartered accountants to look into the matter, REL added.