Reliance Industries had told the Bombay High Court it cannot sell gas to NTPC at $2.34 per unit - which it had proposed in an international competitive bidding - since an empowered group of ministers had fixed the price at $4.2 per unit.

The bid was for 12 million metric standard cubic metres of gas per day for a period of 17 years at $2.34 per unit for NTPC's Kawas and Gandhar expansion projects, both in Gujarat.

At the FICCI meet Thursday, the power secretary also said that NTPC would float a bulk tender worth Rs.21,000 crore for sourcing supercritical power equipment that can generate 7,260 MW electricity.

'NTPC will float the tender in the next 10 days for sourcing super-critical equipment for its nine 660 MW unit and two 660 MW units of Damodar Valley Corp (India's first multipurpose river valley project).'