The battle for the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link climaxed on Wednesday with Anil Ambani pipping his sibling Mukesh to bag the project.
MUMBAI: The battle for the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link climaxed on Wednesday with Anil Ambani pipping his sibling Mukesh to bag the project.
A consortium led by Anil won the contract for the Rs4,000 crore project with a promise to build it in four years and recover the costs in five years, 11 months and one day, a ‘concession period’ of nine years, 11 months, one day.
The only other bidder was a consortium led by Mukesh Ambani. This group quoted a concession period of 75 years.
The country’s longest sea link will join Sewri in Mumbai with Nhava-Sheva on the mainland, a distance of 22km. Two other consortia did not bid despite being cleared in the pre-qualification round.
These included engineering giants Larsen & Toubro and Gammon India and the other led by the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative.
The fight between the brothers had reached the Supreme Court at the pre-qualification stage when the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation, the agency planning the project, had disqualified Anil’s consortium by challenging the financial feasibility of Hyundai, one of its partners,
Anil’s consortium challenged the evaluation done by Crisil, an adviser to the state, on the grounds that it was also consultant to Mukesh’s partner SKIL, leading to a conflict of interests.
While Anil lost the battle in the Bombay high court, the SC ruled in his favour and told his company, Reliance Energy Ltd, to submit its bid by December 15, 2006.
The rejection of another major company, China Harbour Engineering Company Pvt Ltd, by the state government had also led to a controversy. The reason cited was that it did not meet the criteria of building a bridge costing more than Rs850 crore, though a bridge it has built in China is longer than the proposed sea link.
The state cabinet subcommittee on infrastructure has to give final approval to the deal.
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