“Bringing it (tender) to the cabinet is an indication of the transparency that the department has, the minister has where he would like to share the procedure, the process followed, the steps taken in order to arrive to what we have arrived and to allot to work and to move ahead with certain aspects,” Conrad told reporters.

“You have to understand that it is a large tender, it is a Rs 700 crore tender and when a large tendering process like this happens, it is a basic process or a kind of culture that we follow that any large decision that is there and a decision which could possibly have you know, people could misunderstand even though there is nothing to misunderstand but it has possibility,” he said while adding, “So it is always a culture that we try to bring these kind of decisions to the cabinet for the sake of transparency. We are not trying to hide anything, it has been given all the details to the cabinet ministers and everything is in the open for people to see.” 

Recently, the opposition AITC leader and former chief minister Mukul Sangma has questioned the Cabinet decision to approve a tendering process proposed by the power department and cautioned the cabinet ministers if it can be a trap against them. 

Reacting to this, Conrad said, “It's quite funny that Dr Mukul Sangma has questioned why. That means he is questioning the transparency procedure that we are having. If we wanted to do it quietly or if there was an intention then we would have never brought it to Cabinet.”

He said every detail about how many times the retendering, how many times the extension of the tendering was done it's mentioned out there in the cabinet note and the cabinet ministers were briefed about it about the fact that the government had written continuously couple of times to the REC and inform them about the different kind of issues that came up in the tendering process and sought their approval to go ahead because the tendering process had been extended had been re-tendered.