Island city road bids spring a surprise

In a surprise move, contractors bidding for road projects in the island city have bid only marginally lower than the estimated tender cost. In fact, one company Relcon and Mahavir, bid 5.4 per cent more than the tender cost. There has been general criticism that the quality of roads has been deteriorating with most contractors bidding ridiculously lower than the tender cost.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) finalised the contractors for the road projects only on Thursday. Some of these bidders are companies that won bids in the civic administration's Rs 388-crore tenders for roads in the western suburbs.

"This year we used the e-tendering process for inviting bidders and companies across India and even outside, participated. However, the companies that took part in the bidding for the past five years, participated this time also," said a senior civic official. He also said, "Since companies have bid higher, we can expect that the quality of work done in the island city will improve this time," the official added.

The roads department had enlarged its tender packages this year in order to woo big infrastructure firms such as Larsen & Toubro and Gammon India to carry out roads constructions in the city. However, the bidding process was devoid of these big names.

On the other hand, RPS Infraprojects (formerly R P Shah) which has been blacklisted by the BMC participated in the bidding process.

The company has earned roughly Rs 190 crore in previous road contracts. This year, the company bid 5.55 per cent less than the estimated rate for the road projects. It was awarded Rs 135.87crore in the bidding process in the western suburbs for concretisation of roads.

Bidding facts

RPS and Prakash engineering bid 5.5 per cent less than estimated.

Relcon and Mahavir bid 5.40 per cent more than estimated

RPS and Priti bid 3.33 per cent less than estimated

R K Madhani bid 14.10 per cent less than estimated

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