Bids invited for 10 more road projects

The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has invited bids for the second lot of 10 projects that are a part of the Rs 48,000-crore Pradhan Mantri Bharat Jodo Pariyojana (PMBJP).

Interested parties have to submit bids for four-laning of a total of 529 km of highway on a build operate transfer (BOT) basis by July 27.

Those on the bidding block are the Ranchi-Hazaribagh, Ambala-Chandhigarh, Jalandhar-Amritsar, Nagpur-Kondhali, Kondhali-Talegaon, Jorbat-Shillong, Indore-Kalaghat and Agra-Bharatpur sections and the Guna bypass.

NHAI has already awarded contracts for the first lot of 6 projects, involving upgrading of 622 km of highways, earlier this year.

Construction majors Srei, Nagarjuna, Gammon, DS Constructions and Ircon have bagged a section each. The work on these stretches is expected to be completed by March 2006.

The PMBJP involves four-laning of 10,000 km of roads, which are outside the ambit of the ongoing Rs 58,000-crore National Highways Development Project (NHDP). The sections have been identified on the basis of traffic density.

The government's financial involvement in this project, being executed entirely on the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, will be restricted to providing the capital grant component to bridge the gap between the operator's estimated toll revenue and his capital costs.

Bidding takes place on the extent of capital grant sought by the operator, which has been pegged at an average of between 25-30 per cent of the project cost, according to government officials.

The ministry had, in September last year, shortlisted 98 entrepreneurs to be empanelled to bid for upgradation of these non-NHDP sections. The project was announced in the Budget for 2003-04.