Mega highway projects worth Rs 45k cr lined up

These projects would be awarded to private parties on a revenue-sharing basis,under which the developers pay a part of the toll earnings to the government,an National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) official said.

“Since these are lucrative projects from the point of toll revenues,we would award them on revenue sharing basis,” the official added.

Sources have informed that the NHAI has already asked potential bidders to submit their initial ‘request for qualification'(RFQ) documents for two of these 10 projects,spread over Rajasthan,Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.

The RFQ for the Rs 4,284-crore project involving six-laning the 435-km-long Kishangarh (Rajasthan)-Ahmedabad section has already been issued. That apart,RFQ for the Rs 3,550-crore project for six-laning of the 436-km stretch between Ichapuram-Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh has also been issued,sources said.

The NHAI is also preparing detailed project reports (DPRs) for three other projects including the biggest project of the 10 projects–the Rs 8,000-crore contract for double-laning the 700-km stretch between Amritsar in Punjab and Jodhpur in Rajasthan.

In-principle approvals for five other projects have also been obtained,the official said.

These five projects are — Kolhapur-Nagpur in Maharashtra (475 km),Ahmedabad-Gondal in Gujarat (425 km),Aurangabad- Dhankuni in West Bengal (475 km),Goa-Maharashtra Border (475 km) and the 445-km-long Bhavnagar-Dwarka stretch in Gujarat.

To expedite highways developement,the government has identified these large projects of over 400 km each against the usual project size of 50-200 km for every contract.

Earlier this month,Transport Minister Kamal Nath had announced that six ‘mega projects’ would be awarded and the first one will be awarded in four to six weeks.

The development of highways would cost about Rs 3,76,000 crore in the next four years and about 50-60 per cent of this expected to come from the private sector,according to government estimates.