Same old firms bag new BMC road contracts

Companies long associated with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and responsible for the present state of the city's roads, have bid for road contracts worth Rs 530 crore in the island city. Some of these bidders were the same that won bids in the civic administration's Rs 388-crore road tenders in the western suburbs.

According information obtained from senior officials of the civic administration's Roads, Bridges and Traffic department, when the island city roads tenders were opened on Friday, only six companies had bid for the four-road tender package.

The department officials had said the tender package had been expanded in a bid to woo big infrastructure firms such as Larsen & Toubro and Gammon India for road construction in the city.

However, two companies, RPS Infraprojects, in joint venture with Prakash Engineering and Supreme Infra, bid for the Rs 148.53 crore contract for asphalt roads, while the Rs 127.47-crore contract received only one bid from Relcon, in joint venture with Mahavir Infraprojects.

Mahavir Infraprojects, in joint venture with R K Madhani and R P S Infraprojects, won two bids for the Rs 117.29-crore contract for concretising roads in the island city. There was only one bidder, R K Madhani for the Rs 137.33-crore concretization contract.

In the past five years, Relcon has earned roughly Rs 207.5-crore from BMC road contracts pie, while the figure was about Rs 131 crore for Prakash Engineering, and over Rs 200 crore for R K Madhani. The figure was roughly Rs 190 crore for RPS Infraprojects (formerly R P Shah), a company the BMC had blacklisted.

Additional municipal commissioner Mohan Adtani at a recent standing committee, however, said, "RPS Infrapojects had been blacklisted by the buildings proposal department in 2010. The roads department is a separate department and its tender norms and conditions are separate from that of the building proposals department, so the company can bid for road contracts."

... contd.

ALSO READ

In a first, BMC to survey children under 14

The prodigal actor

Airfares: Travel agents to keep shutters down on Tuesday

Teen raped at birthday party, sold to man