IRB’s Mhaiskars made their riches from roads and toll

In Pune, CBI raids IRB lawyer in probe into RTI activist's murder.

Virendra Mhaiskar, the Chairman and Managing Director of the Rs 3,250-crore IRB Infrastructure Developers Ltd — which has been accused of improper business links with BJP chief Nitin Gadkari's firms — is considered the undisputed toll king of Maharashtra.

The Mhaiskars, including his brother Jayant who promoted Mumbai Entry Point Ltd, collect toll on 16 major roads, including some of India's most iconic ones such as the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and the Bandra-Worli Sea Link.

"The Mhaiskar family is a classic road-to-riches story," said a business rival, who competes with IRB for infrastructure projects in the state. Besides collecting toll, the IRB Group has built 19 roads, most of them in Maharashtra. Its order book is worth Rs 7,700 crore with 16 road projects in the pipeline. Besides, IRB has a 1,200 acre land bank along the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

In Forbes' Richest Indians list of 2011, Virendra Mhaiskar ranks 78.

Dattatraya Mhaiskar, a Chitpavan Brahmin with roots in the state's coastal belt of Konkan, floated IRB in 1977 with small road projects in the Kalyan-Dombivali region. His years as an engineer in the state government apparently gave him access to leaders across the political spectrum.

The company's fortunes grew after elder son Virendra joined it in 1990. In 1995, with Gadkari as PWD Minister, IRB bagged the Rs 104-crore Build-Operate-Transfer project to widen and maintain a 25 km road stretch between Bhiwandi and Thane. Besides, when the Shiv Sena-BJP was in power between 1995 and 1999 and Gadkari was PWD minister, it received five contracts valued at close to Rs 50 crore.

The relatively unknown company shot into the national limelight in 2004 when it paid Rs 918 crore to the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation for the rights to collect toll on India's first expressway built between Mumbai and Pune. While big road projects were bid out to construction companies by the BJP-Sena government, MSRDC opened up a new business avenue by auctioning the rights to toll. To exploit this, IRB floated IRB Infrastructure Developers in 1998.

... contd.

ALSO READ

Delhi nursing graduate loses eye in acid attack at Bandra station

Worry and anger in Mumbai police after R R Patil snatches right to promote

MNS student wing demands question papers in Marathi

UN rapporteur comes calling, lends an ear to Ishrat's mother