Same old firms bag new BMC road contracts

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."

Last month, for the western suburbs, Prakash Engineers was awarded the Rs 95.9-crore contract for asphalting all roads in the western suburbs while K R Constructions (Rs 132.39 crore) and RPS Infraprojects (Rs 135.87crore) were together awarded Rs 268.26 crore concretising contracts.

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