Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL) opened tenders on Friday for building tunnels and viaducts in three stretches in phase II project, in which Larsen and Toubro has emerged on top with the lowest bids.
With an outlay of ₹61,843 crore, Metro Rail’s phase II work involves a combination of elevated and underground stretches on Madhavaram-SIPCOT, Light House-Poonamallee and Madhavaram-Sholinganallur stretches.
CMRL divided the work and floated tenders section by section. One of the biggest contracts in phase II is building tunnels for the 21-km Madhavaram-Taramani (a part of the Madhavaram to SIPCOT corridor) stretch. This was split and floated as two tenders — Madhavaram to Kellys (9 km) and Kellys to Taramani Road Junction (12 km). For both these contracts, L&T emerged on top with the lowest bid of ₹1,998 crore for the Madhavaram-Kellys stretch and ₹2,385 crore for Kellys-Taramani Road Junction stretch.
According to CMRL sources, though L&T quoted the lowest rate, the company is likely to get the tunnelling contract for either of the two stretches. “We do not want one contractor to dominate the project. The reason is, if there is a delay, then a huge section will be affected. But if quite a few contractors are involved, even if one contractor does not meet deadlines and delays work in one stretch, the others would not be affected. Hence, we have decided to restrict the number of contracts that will be given to a contractor on a single stretch,” an official said.
Similarly, L&T also emerged as the lowest bidder for building viaduct and stations from Poonamallee to Porur, quoting ₹945 crore. But as it already got a contract from Porur to Power House, it can select either the Porur-Poonamallee stretch or the Porur-Power House stretch.
