L&T, GMR, Bhel among bidders for private trains

NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways said on Wednesday that 15 companies, including Arvind Aviation, Cube Highways, Gateway Rail Freight, L&T, IRB, GMR Highways, state-owned BHEL and railway PSU, IRCTC among others, have submitted bids to qualify for running passenger trains under the public private partnership (PPP) mode.
The railways received 120 bids for 12 clusters, including Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, Chennai, Howrah, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Patna and Secunderabad. A maximum of 12 bids each were received for the second cluster of Mumbai and New Delhi. For Bengaluru cluster, there are 11 bidders.
The ministry said Spain-based Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarrriles (CAF), Megha Engineering and Infrastructure, RK Associates and Hoteliers and Welspun Enterprises, are some of the other companies that submitted their applications. The railways had seen a higher level of interest in the pre-bid meetings. But some firms like Bombardier, which had participated in them, did not bid for the project.
The railway ministry said the bids were opened on Wednesday in response to the request for qualifications (RFQs) floated by it for passenger train services comprising 140 origin-destination pairs of routes through introduction of 151 modern trains.
This is the first major initiative of attracting private investment for running passenger trains on the railway network. The project is expected to entail private sector investment of about Rs 30,000 crore.
Officials said only qualified bidders will be allowed to put in bids. The railways has set February 2021 target to award the project and it aims to introduce 12 trains by March 2023 and 45 in 2023-2024.