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Journalism of Courage
The Hyderabad-headquartered infrastructure player Megha Engineering & Infrastructure Ltd (MEIL) purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 140 crore on April 11, 2023, a month before winning the tender for the Rs 14,400-crore Thane-Borivali twin tunnel project, the ECI data released Thursday showed.
Overall, the privately-held firm founded in 1989 was among the largest purchasers of electoral bonds, having purchased Rs 821 crore worth of the bonds, the data showed.
The Maharashtra government’s Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) had floated the tender for the project — two road tunnels under the Sanjay Gandhi National Park — in January that year. MEIL was the only bidder whose technical bid was found responsive.
The Indian Express has earlier reported that the Bombay High Court in May 2023 dismissed two pleas of Mumbai-based engineering firm Larsen & Toubro (L&T) whose bids for the construction of the tunnels were rejected by MMRDA.
L&T had filed two petitions challenging the rejection of its technical bid, one for package 1 of the project, which includes constructing 5.75 km of the tunnel on the Borivali side. In its second petition, L&T had argued that its bid for package 2 (constructing 6.09 km of the tunnel on the Thane side) of the project was rejected by the authorities although it was a successful bidder.
The MMRDA had then submitted in court that L&T’s request to rectify its error after the financial bid was opened could not be allowed as per norms and sought dismissal of both the pleas.
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