Ahmedabad: The National Highspeed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) on Wednesday invited bids for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project under the first tender. Two consortiums of companies and Larsen & Toubro have bid for construction work costing Rs 20,000 crore on the 237 km section of the project.
According to media reports, NHSRCL said that this is the biggest tender of the project under which 47% of the bullet train alignment between Vapi and Vadodara of Gujarat is to be covered. Under this, 4 stations Vapi, Bilimora, Surat and Bharuch will also be constructed in this corridor.
NHSRCL stated that three bidders have participated in this competitive bidding, which includes a total of seven infrastructure companies. Afcons Infrastructure, IRCON International and JMC Projects India have bid together. Similarly, NCC-Tata Project-J Kumar Infra Projects have bid together. Larsen and Toubro bid alone.
This 237 km long corridor will have 24 rivers and 30 road crossings. This entire section is in Gujarat where more than 83 percent of the land has been acquired. Railway Minister Piyush Goyal had told the Rajya Sabha that the land acquisition work was to be completed before March 2020, but this has not been done due to some problems in Maharashtra. The entire project is of 508 km, of which about 349 km falls in Gujarat.
According to the National Highspeed Rail Corporation, about 90,000 people will get direct or indirect employment from this project alone.