Bengaluru Metro delay: IL&FS Engineering and Construction Company gets June deadline
Top sources in Namma Metro told ET that the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation (BMRCL) has levied a penalty on the contractor for failing to complete the project on time. The exact amount of the penalty is, however, not known.
The BMRCL awarded the ₹327-crore contract to IL&FS in April 2015, setting a 27-month deadline. The contract included the construction of elevated structures (viaduct) of about 3.9-km length from Mysuru Road station to Pattanagere station, which consisted of four stations on the west extension of the East-West Corridor.
The stations are to come up at Nayandahalli, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Jnanabharathi and Pattanagere.
Though the BMRCL was quick to award the contract, it failed to acquire the land required for the project on time. In the 72-km Phase II network, IL&FS was the first company to receive the contract while the second contract was awarded to Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC) in January 2016.
The recent BMRCL newsletter states that piling, pile cap, pier and pier cap work are still in progress. At the stations, the contractor has taken up work of costing pile, pile cap, column up to concourse level and portal beam at concourse level is in progress, the newsletter said.
The newsletter gives information on the progress of work every month. It does not, however, indicate the volume of the work remaining or the total quantum of work.
If previous deadlines are anything to go by, after a contractor completes civil work, it takes almost a year to lay the tracks, instal signalling and telecommunication systems among others.
BMRCL's previous managing director Pradeep Singh Kharola, in his last interaction before he quit Namma Metro, had termed the performance of IL&FS "bad". "The contractor was initially slow. It's picking up now," he had said. Another BMRCL official attributed the delay to multiple factors including the contractor's command — or the lack of it — over its manpower.
IL&FS has executed metro projects for Rapid Metro Rail, Gurgaon, which involved the construction of a double track elevated viaduct worth ₹256-crore and five elevated stations. The firm has also won contracts to build metros in Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Kolkata.
