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A day before the final bid for 147-km Upper Ganga Canal Expressway was to be submitted by the qualified developers,the state government decided again to extend the date till August 20.
The last date for submission of request for proposal document (bid) for the Rs 8,700-crore project was August 5. The bid was to be opened on the same day but on Wednesday,a day before the final bid,a decision was taken to extend the deadline till August 20. No concrete reason was cited for this.
The date has been extended at least thrice in the last two months initially,it was planned to hand over the project to the developer in June.
Some officials said the bid has been shifted following unavoidable circumstances.
Sources in the government said there was a fear that the project might suffer the same fate as the Kushinagar Airport project. The last date for submission of bid for that was July 31,but none of the four qualified developers had shown interest.
Officials said there was a chance that the developers might not turn up because they had already shown reservations towards certain parts of the project in the past especially the clubbing of the main project with the navigational project on Upper Ganga Canal.
Thereafter,the state government had separated the navigational facility from the main project and a pre-bid meeting was called on June 26 to inform developers about it.
Three pre-bid meetings were held in the last three months with developers and other amendments have been made too.
The developers who qualified for the project include Jai Prakash Associates,Consortium of Reliance Infrastructure and Reliance Infraventures,Sibmot JV and DSC-Apollo Joint Venture.
The pre-bid meeting for the development of slaughter-cum-meat processing house in Meerut on Public Private Partnership basis,meanwhile,was held on Wednesday.
The representatives of qualified bidders ¿ including Hind Agro and Alana ¿ who were present at the meeting,requested for an extension of the deadline by at least a week. Officials of the Urban Development Department,the nodal agency for the project,said on their request,the date was extended by a week.
Alok Ranjan,Principal secretary,Urban Development Department,said: The response for the slaughterhouse project is great and all the four qualified bidders have shown interest. They have just asked for an extension of the financial bid deadline by a week from August 22 to August 29.
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