Team News Riveting
New Delhi, August 12
Heavyweight corporate players have shown keen interest to ply the private trains in India.
After the success of first pre-bid meeting held on July 21, the Indian Railways conducted the pre-application meeting for running private trains in 12 clusters across the Indian Railways network. As expected, more private players come forward and participated in the second bid meeting that is learnt to be the last as Railways will invite bids from private players on September 8.
Many big industry players attended the meeting and even purchased tender documents, according to officials. The prominent included Sterlite Power, Medha, Bharat Forge, GMR Infrastructure Limited, I- Board India Private Limited, R. K. Associates & Hoteliers Private Limited, Australian firm CAF India Private Limited, ALSTOM Transport India Limited and others.
Even state-run firms IRCTC Limited, BHEL, RITES and BEML are also in the fray.
The national transporter plans to run the first private train by April 2023. The government believes that multiple operators in train operations will create competition and improve service delivery. This is the first initiative of private investment for running Passenger Trains over Indian Railways Network.
The project would entail private sector investment of about Rs 30,000 crore.
The second pre-bid conference was held on today and the authority will have to respond to the queries latest by August 21, 2020. The application due date (ADD) is September 8 and the firms will be short-listed on November 8.
The bid due date is scheduled for March 2021 and the selection of bidders for each cluster is likely to be done on April 2021.
The project aims to bring in new technologies, boost revenues and create more job opportunities. There are plans to run 151 private trains in addition to the trains which have already been running.
