L&T bids lowest for C4 segment of Bullet Train project
21 Oct 2020
L&T has emerged as the lowest bidder after the National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) opened financial bids submitted by the three infrastructure development firms for package C4 of the Bullet Train project on Monday.
The company bid Rs24,985 crore for constructing the 237.1 km line, the longest segment of the high-speed rail project, beating two other bidders, Tata Projects and Afcons Infrastructure.
This package represents 47 per cent of the main line of 508.17 km. L&T’s segment that starts from the Maharashtra-Gujarat border and goes up to Vadodara station, includes four stations, at Vapi, Bilimora, Surat and Bharuch in Gujarat.
The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train corridor is being built at a cost of Rs1,08,000 crore with funding from the Japan International Cooperation Agency. NHSRCL had earlier said that the project's execution has slowed because of the Covid-19 outbreak.
NHSRCL invited bids for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (also called the MAHSR Bullet Train project) on 15 March 2019. Technical bids were opened on 23 September in which three bidders qualified. The other two bidders were a consortium of Tata Projects Ltd, J Kumar Infraprojects Ltd and NCC Ltd and a joint venture of Afcons Infrastructure Ltd, Ircon International Ltd and JMC Projects India Ltd.
The scope of the work includes design and construction of civil works along with building works, including testing and commissioning on design-build for double line high-speed railway, involving viaducts, bridges, maintenance depots, tunnel, stations etc.