Bidders picked for longest underground rail corridor

The nine consortia declared eligible are AFCONS Infrastructure Ltd-Kyivmetrobud, DOGUS-SOMA, CEC-ITD Cementation India-Tata Projects Ltd, IL&FS Engineering and Construction-China Railway 25th Bureau Group, J Kumar Infraprojects-China Railway Engineering Group Co, Larsen & Toubro-Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Company, OSJC Moscow Metrostroy-Hindustan Construction Company, Pratibha Industries-Guandong Yuantian Engineering and Unity Infraprojects Ltd-IVRCL Ltd-China Railway Tunnel Group.

Sanjay Sethi, managing director of MMRC, said, “We have finalised the list of companies eligible for bidding after getting an approval from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is providing more than 50 per cent of funds for the project. The companies that were declared ineligible mostly fell short in technical experience. They are expected to approach us and we will give them an explanation about their disqualification in writing. Meanwhile, we are holding meetings now to discuss when the RFP documents can be handed out to the qualified companies. It will be done in the next few days.”

Even as the MMRC had called for pre-qualification bids in September last year, the tendering process was delayed as the Metro corporation had to be reconstituted as a joint venture between the Union government and the state government from a wholly-owned entity of the latter. The file for the reconstitution was with the state government since October last year, but was cleared only in July this year. The first board meeting of the new corporation was held last month.

The Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro will be Mumbai’s first fully-underground Metro line running for 33.5 kilometres and having 26 underground stations and a car depot at Aarey.

The MMRC has divided the civil work for the Rs 23,126-crore project in seven contract packages.

The Metro corridor, billed to be one of the city’s most expensive infrastructure projects, will connect prime business and industrial districts such as Nariman Point, Bandra Kurla Complex, Andheri MIDC and SEEPZ, and the Mumbai airport, passing through some very narrow and congested areas. Work on the project, for which the chief minister conducted a ‘bhoomipujan’ last month, is expected to begin by the end of this year.

manasi.phadke@expressindia.com