The Indian Railways said on Thursday that four companies — Cube Highways and Infrastructure, GMR Highways, IRB Infrastructure Developers Limited and Megha Engineering & Infrastructures — have been shortlisted to financially bid for running passenger trains under public private partnership mode in all the 12 clusters.
The clusters are two regions of Mumbai, two of Delhi, Chandigarh, Howrah, Patna, Prayagraj, Secunderabad, Jaipur, Chennai and Bengaluru.
10 clusters
Four bidders that have been shortlisted to bid for operating 10 clusters are: consortium of Gateway Rail Freight and Gateway Distriparks; Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC); Malempati Power and Techno Infra Developers; and Welspun Enterprise. The 10 clusters where these four bidders have been shortlisted are two of Mumbai, two of Delhi, Chandigarh, Howrah, Patna, Prayagraj, Secunderabad and Jaipur.
L&T Infrastructure Development Projects has been shortlisted to bid for four regions – Secunderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru and one of the two regions of Mumbai.
Similarly, PNC Infratech has qualified to bid for four clusters – two in Delhi, Prayagraj and Jaipur.
Consortium of RK Associates & Hoteliers and Omaxe Limited has qualified to financially bid for two regions – one each in Delhi and Mumbai; BHEL has qualified to bid for Bengaluru region, and consortium of Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF), CAF India Private Limited; CAF Investment Projects has qualified to bid for one region of Mumbai.
The Railways had seen a higher interest from private players at earlier stage. But some major manufacturing firms like Bombardier shied away from participation at qualifying stage. This is the first initiative of Railways to attract private investment for operating a large bunch of passenger trains. This is expected to entail investments of ₹30,000 crore.
The Railway Ministry has completed the evaluation of applications. Out of 120 applications received at request for qualification stage, 102 applications are eligible to participate in the financial bidding stage, stated Railways. All these applications were received from 16 firms in total, according to the railway statement.
One region of Mumbai, followed by Delhi and Prayagraj see maximum number of bid qualifications.