NEW DELHI: The government’s plan to award 60 contracts for modernising and improving more than 6,000 kilometres of roads in the country by December 2008 seems to be delayed due to a clause that eliminated certain companies from bidding for contracts.
“There was a cap on number of companies that can bid for the road projects,” a government official said, adding that certain clauses included in the Request for Proposal (RoP) document had resulted in the delay.
“We are working on it. The projects will be awarded soon,” the official said.
The clause 2.1.18 inserted in the RoP document limits the number of bidders through capping the number of bids per developer, number of projects per developer, and number of projects that a developer failed to get funding for.
The clause is understood to have resulted in withdrawal of many bidders from the race, hence leaving many projects to be awarded with less than five bidders each, and some with no bidders at all.
Earlier in August, road transport & highways secretary Brahma Dutt had said that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) would award 53 contracts for modernising and improving 6,000 kilometres of road under Phase III and Phase V of the ongoing National Highway Development Project (NHDP).
The contracts were to be awarded in two lots — first one comprising 23 projects and the second the remaining ones. The NHAI, however, is learnt to have awarded only two out of the 23 projects in the last two months from the first lot.
DNA Money could not confirm the figures with the officials from the Union ministry of road transport & highways.
Interestingly, the finance ministry’s Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee had late last month approved 21 road projects worth about Rs 28,300 crore to be taken up under the Phase III and Phase V of the NHDP. Those projects yet remain to be awarded.
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