The BHEL, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, Megha Engineering and Infrastructures, L&T Infrastructure Development Projects, and GMR Highways are among the 15 firms which applied for a dozen route clusters to be opened up for private train operators under the public, private partnership mode.
About 120 applications were received on Wednesday in response to Ministry of Railways (MOR) inviting Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for private participation in operation of passenger train services comprising 140 origin destination pair of routes through introduction of 151 modern trains to increase high quality trains operated on the network.
This first major initiative of attracting private investment for running passenger trains over Indian railway network is expected to entail private sector investment of about ₹30,000 crore. Private entities are to be selected through a transparent two-stage competitive bidding process comprising of Request for Qualification (RFQ) and Request for Proposal (RFP).
The MoR will complete the evaluation of applications and RFP documents will be made available to the qualified applicants by November and by February 2021, all the clusters are to be awarded. While both Mumbai clusters received 21 applications, Delhi received 22, Bengluru got 11 applications, Secunderabad and Jaipur received 10 applications each, Chennai, Chandigarh, Howrah and Patna 9 each, a press release said.