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Journalism of Courage
Engineering firm Afcons has emerged as the lowest bidder to construct the 21-km tunnel for the bullet train project in Maharashtra, including India’s first seven-km undersea tunnel.
Afcons has bid around Rs 6,397.28 to carry out the work, lower than Larsen and Toubro, the only other bidder in the fray. The bids were opened in February.
The 21-km showpiece infrastructure at Thane Creek is crucial to the high-speed rail corridor and is touted as the most challenging piece of civil engineering in the project. It may take around 60 months to build.
The bullet train project is a 508-km corridor between Ahmedabad and Mumbai crossing Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Being executed with technical and financial assistance from Japan, the project costs around Rs 1.1 lakh crore as per 2015 prices.
The tender process for the project had run into controversy earlier. The Indian Express had learnt that the tender did not find Japanese participation and could not be finalised in the first attempt in 2019-2020. There were concerns about the cost that had emerged from discussions with Japanese firms at the time.
Later, non-availability of land in Maharashtra became one of the reasons why the tender was cancelled in 2021. It was finally floated in September 2022.
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