Minister says BMC blacklisted one contractor of South Mumbai road
Samant told the house that CC road tenders were floated in 2 phases and the contract for the first phase was awarded. As part of it, RSIIL was given a contract for 212 roads for Rs 1600-crore work, but that was terminated later.
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RSIIL was one of the five companies that were awarded a Rs 6,000-crore contract for the road.
Over six months after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) terminated the Rs 1,600-crore cement and concrete (CC) road contract given to Roadways Solutions India Infra Limited (RSIIL), industries minister Uday Samant told the legislative council on Wednesday that the BMC terminated the contract after blacklisting the company and a fine of Rs 64 crore has been recovered from the company.
Samant told the house that CC road tenders were floated in 2 phases and the contract for the first phase was awarded. As part of it, RSIIL was given a contract for 212 roads for Rs 1600-crore work, but that was terminated later.
A new tender was later floated for that work but this time 208 roads were included and new contractor NCC was given this contract.
“The BMC terminated the contract after blacklisting the company and a fine of Rs 64 crore has been recovered from the company. The other four companies–Megha Engineering, NCC Private Limited, Dinesh Chandra Infra Pvt Limited, Eagle Infra Pvt Ltd–were penalised for delaying the contract and a fine of Rs 111 crore has also been recovered from these companies. Before that, Rs 64 crore have also been recovered from the roadways company and after terminating its contract, the NCC Pvt Limited was appointed as the new contractor for the work,” Samant said.
The issue was raised by BJP MLC Prasad Lad in the upper house on Wednesday.
“The government should reveal its stand on the CC roads. Whether the company which was given a contract has been blacklisted? In the first phase, 20 percent work is also not completed. There is a demand for an ED probe in the CC road work and contracts,” Lad said in the house.
Sena UBT MLC Anil Parab also said the company must be blacklisted across all state government departments and not just in BMC and there should also be inquiry into whether norms were followed by the company while bagging the contract.
After the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government came to power in July 2022, CM Shinde had vowed to make Mumbai roads pothole-free by converting them into CC roads by 2024. Following this, the civic body announced the concretisation of 397 km of roads and floated tenders worth Rs 5,800 crore in August 2022 for Phase 1.
However, this tender was later scrapped in the first week of November due to inadequate response from bidders. Later, by the end of November, a fresh tender was floated again at a cost of Rs 6,070 crore, and five contractors were given work orders.
RSIIL was one of the five companies that were awarded a Rs 6,000-crore contract for the road.
In May last year, a penalty of Rs 10 crore was imposed on RSIIL for delaying the start of the work. Subsequently in November 2023, the BMC terminated RSIIL’s contract and directed that the company pay the total penalty of Rs 64.60 within a period of 30 days. However, the company had dragged the richest civic body to arbitration after contract termination.
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